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THE 


/ 


STANDARD 

n 

REFERENCE WORK 


4 

FOR THE 

HOME, SCHOOL, AND LIBRARY 


* 


VOLUME II 



MINNEAPOLIS AND CHICAGO 
WELLES BROTHERS PUBLISHING COMPANY 

1917 





COPYRIGHT 1912-1913-1915-1917 
WELLES BROTHERS PUBLISHING COMPANY 


FEB I019J7 


©014 4570(57 


CALCULATING MACHINE—CALEDONIA 


Calculating Machine, a device for 
performing the simpler arithmetical opera¬ 
tions mechanically. The simplest and most 
ancient is the abacus, still in use by the 
Chinese. Various types have been con¬ 
structed from mere adding machines to 
the most intricate and complicated, by 
which may be performed almost any opera¬ 
tion involving numbers. Pascal, the em¬ 
inent physicist, invented one in 1642. The 
common slide-rule would come under the 
head of a calculating machine. Under the 
name of adding-machine they have recently 
been greatly perfected, and now find a 
place in almost all business offices. Any¬ 
one may operate such a machine with but 
little experience, as it has a keyboard like 
a typewriter, with rows of keys in columns 
from 1 to 9. The pressing of a key marks 
the figure on a slip of paper. Other keys 
' are for addition, subtraction, and in the 
larger machines for multiplication. The 
most improved types are operated by elec¬ 
tricity, as are also some cash registers 
which have automatic adding attachments. 
Calculating devices have also been made as 
a part of typewriting machines. This de¬ 
vice is very effectively used in the making 
out of statements. 

Calculus, as commonly used, means that 
branch of higher mathematics which deals 
with quantities as capable of continuous 
growth by infinitely small values known as 
differentials. The investigation of the in¬ 
finitesimal changes of variables whose rela¬ 
tions are known is called differential cal¬ 
culus. When the variables themselves are 
to be found from the behavior of their 
differentials, we have integral calculus. 
This theory was discovered independently 
and almost simultaneously by Newton and 
Leibnitz, but the terms employed by the 
latter are generally used in the subject to¬ 
day. Calculus has been of the greatest 
service in the development of mathemat¬ 
ics and its application to the problems of 
mechanics. 

Calcutta, a noted city of British India. 
It is situated on the east bank of the 
Hoogly, a short cut from the Ganges to 
the sea, and is about eighty miles from the 
Bay of Bengal. Its wharves extend for 
ten miles along the Hoogly. The water 


front is well built with warehouses and 
places of business. The river is crossed 
by a pontoon bridge. The government 
house occupies six acres. Fort William, 
begun by Governor Clive, has been com¬ 
pleted at a cost of $10,000,000. There 
are fine parks and drives, tramways, and 
electric lights. Outside of the modern city 
lie extensive native suburbs of mud huts, 
little better, travelers assert, than pigsties. 
Water obtained from the Hoogly, twelve 
miles up, is filtered in huge tanks. Such 
provision has been made for sewers as is 
possible in a city built on a dead level only 
a few feet above the river. The death 
rate has been reduced to about 30 per 1,000 
inhabitants annually. Cholera is said nev¬ 
er to be absent from the filthy native 
quarters. Rainy July and August are the 
healthful season; midwinter is the worst. 
I he annual rainfall is about sixty-six 
inches; the mean temperature for the 
year about 79°. 

Calcutta is the center of an extensive 
railway system. It is the chief port of 
foreign commerce, exceeding even Bombay 
in this respect. I here are seldom fewer 
than 200 ships at the wharves. Calcutta is 
reputed to have the largest tea warehouse 
in the world. The export trade of the 
city amounts to about forty-three per cent 
of that of all India. It is carried on chief¬ 
ly with London by way of the Suez Canal. 
It exceeds $250,000,000 a year. Opium is 
exported to China. The principal articles 
of export are cotton, cotton-seed, jute, 
wheat, tea, rice, indigo, leather, hides, furs, 
coffee, lac, and wool. The principal im¬ 
ports are cotton and woolen cloth, yarn, 
iron goods, and machinery. The 1911 pop¬ 
ulation was 1,222,313. 

See Bombay; India; Black Hole; 
Opium ; Brahmans. 

Caledonia, an ancient name for north 
Scotland. The term is found in Pliny’s 
Natural History and in the Agricola of 
Tacitus of 96 A. D. Tacitus describes a 
battle between the Roman forces and 30,000 
Caledonians. They are described as fight¬ 
ing with bows, swords, and small shields. 
Agricola erected a line of forts between 
the Friths of Clyde and Forth with the in¬ 
tention of defending the remainder of the 


CALEDONIAN CANAL—CALENDAR 


island against the Caledonians. The name 
persists chiefly in poetry. A canal in the 
counties of Inverness and Argyle is called 
the Caledonian Canal. It extends from 
Murray Frith to Loch Eil, over sixty miles 
distant. It was open to navigation in 1823. 
It shortens the journey around the north¬ 
ern coast of Scotland several hundred 
miles. Ships of 600 tons can pass through 
for it is 120 feet broad at the surface, 50 
feet at the bottom, and 17 feet deep. The 
part that is wholly artificial is 23 miles 
in length. At its highest point, Loch Oich, 
it is 94 feet above sea level. 

Calendar, the orderly record of time. 
About the only units of time in use among 
savage people are the day and the moon. 
Such a moon is the rice moon, or moon for 
gathering wild rice. Another may be the 
sore-eyes moon, when the smoke of the 
tepee and glare of the snow bring on sore 
eyes. Religious ceremonies based on the 
time of the moon carried forward a time 
record, based on the month, far into civili¬ 
zation. Civilization reckons time in years. 
As the phases of the moon do not come 
out even with the end of the year, a year 
composed of new moons is out of harmony 
with a year based on the seasons. 

We trace our calendar to the Egyptians. 
Whether they understood the revolution of 
the earth about the sun or not cannot be 
determined, but they noted the return of 
the sun to a certain position at regular in¬ 
tervals. This they fixed at 365/4 days, 
less a fraction. They established a system 
of leap years and possessed a calendar of 
months. This Egyptian calendar was 
adopted by the Romans. The pontiffs who 
had charge of festivals and religious ob¬ 
servances had charge also of the official 
calendar. In 45 B. C. the Roman calendar 
had run behind nearly three months. The 
spring equinox was scheduled to come off 
in June. Caesar reformed the calendar by 
decreeing that the year 46, “the last year 
of confusion,” should be prolonged to 445 
days. He further ordered that three years 
out of four should have 365 days, and that 
each fourth year,—that is, each year divis¬ 
ible by four,—should have 366 days. This 
is called the Julian Calendar. According 
to it, each century is about three-fourths 


of a day too long. The new century 
should begin a day sooner three centuries 
out of four, a loss of three days every 400 
years. In this way each century began 
farther and farther behind time. Pope 
Gregory, finding that' the church festivals 
were noticeably changing in season, de¬ 
creed, 1582, that the day following the 
fourth of October of that year should be 
recorded the fifteenth instead of the fifth 
day of the month; and to avoid future dif¬ 
ficulty he further decreed that the last year 
of each century three times out of four 
should not be a leap year; or, put in 
another way, that only such century years 
be reckoned leap years as are divisible by 
400. Accordingly, 1700, 1800, and 1900 
had but 365 days, but the year 2000 will 
be assigned 366 days. This is known as 
the Gregorian Calendar. 

The Gregorian Calendar was adopted in- 
all Catholic countries and by most Protes¬ 
tant countries at once. England waited 
until 1751; then fell in with a statute that 
the day following the second of Septem¬ 
ber be reckoned the fourteenth instead of 
the third. The Gregorian Calendar is fol¬ 
lowed by the commercial world; that is to 
say, everywhere save in Russia, in which 
the Greek Church adheres to the Julian 
Calendar for fear of impiety in setting for¬ 
ward church festivals. The Russian dates 
are thirteen days behind ours. When 
Alaska was taken over the difference in 
reckoning was added, so that the official 
records of Alaska would indicate that it 
never had a certain thirteen days at all. 

In France during the Revolutionary pe¬ 
riod, the National Convention enacted in 
November of 1793 that the year should be 
divided into twelve months of thirty days 
each with five days of merry-making at 
the end of each year. The new calendar 
was dated back to September 22, 1792, the 
day on which the new republic took form. 
This calendar was followed for about 
eight years until abolished by order of Na¬ 
poleon. The names of the months were 
as follows: 


October, 

November, 

December, 

January, 

February, 


Vendemiaire, 

Brumaire, 

Frimaire, 

Nivose, 

Pluviose, 


vintage month, 
foggy month, 
sleet month, 
snowy month, 
rainy month. 


CALENDERING—CALHOUN 


March 

April, 

May, 

June, 

July, 

August, 

September, 


Ventose, 

Germinal, 

Floreal, 

Prairial, 

Messidor, 

Thermidor, 

Fructidor, 


windy month, 
bud month, 
flower month, 
meadow month, 
harvest month, 
heat month, 
fruit month. 


Among the odd suggestions may be men¬ 
tioned that of Auguste Comte, 1849, who 
proposed that the months bear the names 
of great men as Moses, Caesar, Shakes¬ 
peare, and St. Paul; and further that each 
day of the year be known by the name 
of some noted person as well. Dates thus 
written would be Romulus, 1905, Socra¬ 
tes, 1872, or such a battle was fought on 
Plato, 1863. 

Calendering, a mechanical process by 
which cotton and linen textiles are “finish¬ 
ed,” that is, given a smooth surface, and, 
if desired, a glaze. Three ends are to be 
attained by calendering. First, the fabric 
is to be made smooth, without fold or 
wrinkle. Second, the threads are to be 
compressed until they lose their round 
shape and become flat. Thus they are 
brought into closer contact and an appear¬ 
ance of strength and firmness is given to 
the fabric. At the same time all knots 
and lumps caused by imperfections in the 
thread are flattened and smoothed. The 
third purpose is to give a luster or glaze 
to the surface of certain materials. 

The agencies employed to accomplish 
these ends, are heat, moisture, pressure, and 
friction, exactly as in ordinary domestic 
ironing. The calendering machine con¬ 
tains from two to five cylinders, made of 
cast iron, wood, paper, or cotton, accord¬ 
ing to the purpose for which they are de¬ 
signed. These are so arranged that the 
pressure can be gauged as desired. To 
produce friction, the cylinders are geared 
to revolve at different rates of speed, so 
that they will rub the surfaces. 

A watered or moire effect is produced by 
passing a double fold of' material between 
the cylinders. The threads of one layer 
press upon the others, so that they are flat¬ 
tened in some places more than in others, 
and thus reflect the light differently. 
Sometimes the cylinders are engraved to 
produce regular moire effects, or embossed 
designs, such as are seen on velvet. 


A machine arranged to calender fabrics 
while wet is used for coarse, heavy cloth, 
of hemp, jute, etc. It is called a water- 
mangle. The polish or finish of certain 
papers is produced by calendering. 

Calends, the first day of the Roman 
month. The nones were the ninth day be¬ 
fore the ides, both days included, and fell 
on the fifth day of the month, save in 
March, May, July, and October, when the 
nones fell on the seventh day. The ides 
were the eighth day after the nones, and 
fell on the thirteenth day of the month, 
save in March, May, July, and October, 
when they fell on the fifteenth day. Dates 
were reckoned backward, so many days be¬ 
fore the ides, the nones, or the calends. 
The second of August was called the 
fourth day before the nones of August; the 
sixth day of August was the eighth day be¬ 
fore the ides of August; and the fourteenth 
day of August was the nineteenth day be¬ 
fore the calends of September. The cal¬ 
ends, nones, and ides were reckoned as the 
first day in each case. Thus the last day 
of each month was called the second day 
before the calends of the following month. 
See Calendar. 

Calgary, kal'ga-ry, the largest city of 
the province of Alberta, Canada. This 
city has had a remarkable growth, which 
is likely to continue, as its location seems 
to possess all those features which make 
for prosperity. It is in the center of one 
of the greatest agricultural and ranching 
districts of the world, at the confluence of 
two rivers, the Bow and the Elbow, and is 
served by three railroads, the Canadian 
Northern, Canadian Pacific, and Grand 
Trunk Pacific. There are extensive coal 
deposits in the vicinity, and the city has 
mills, elevators, and packing houses. Cal¬ 
gary is known as a manufacturing city as 
well as a distributing center; also as the 
city of Stone Schools. The system of edu¬ 
cation is second to none in Canada. Its 
population is about 85,000. 

Calhoun, kal-hoon', John Caldwell 
(1782-1850), an American statesman. He 
was born near Abbeville, South Carolina, 
of Scotch-Irish parentage. He was gradu¬ 
ated at Yale and studied law. He was sent 
to Congress by his native state in 1811. He 


CALIBAN—CALICO 


Served his state and country forty years in 
the House, in the cabinet, in the vice-presi¬ 
dential chair, and in the Senate. He advo¬ 
cated the War of 1812 with England. Al¬ 
though elected vice-president on the Jackson 
ticket, he was opposed to Jackson’s removal 
of the United States funds from private 
banks. He also opposed Jackson’s spoils 
system,—that of giving office in reward for 
political service. 

Calhoun was a staunch free trader. 
When the protective tariff of 1828 was 
enacted, he was the leader of South Caro¬ 
lina in the famous Nullification Act. The 
tariff placed a duty on manufactured goods 
coming into this country. It was framed to 
protect the manufactures of New England, 
rather than the agricultural and cotton 
producing people of the South. Calhoun 
asserted that it was not only the privilege, 
but the duty, of South Carolina to prevent 
this act from taking effect within her bor¬ 
ders. President Jackson declared that 
South Carolina should obey the laws of the 
nation. Carolina was equally agreed 
that she would not do so in this particular. 
A compromise measure, introduced by Hen¬ 
ry Clay, to gradually reduce the tariff 
averted the difficulty. 

Calhoun was the chief exponent of the 
doctrine of state sovereignty. He main¬ 
tained that a state dissatisfied with the 
Union had a perfect right to withdraw 
peaceably, if possible; by force, if neces¬ 
sary. Although this doctrine had been 
enunciated by Massachusetts early in the 
history of the country, Calhoun is common¬ 
ly regarded as its chief champion. 

He was a man of good stuff and un¬ 
compromising integrity. His official career 
is consistent and honorable from beginning 
to end. His personal character has been 
praised by none more highly than by Dan¬ 
iel Webster, his great opponent in debate. 
Calhoun is considered the greatest man 
produced by South Carolina. His grave is 
near his native city. 

See Webster; Clay; Nullification; 
Jackson, Andrew; South Carolina; 
Charleston. 

Caliban, kal'T-ban, the deformed and re¬ 
pulsive slave of Prospero, in Shakespeare’s 
Tempest, Caliban is the opposite of Ariel 


in the same play. As Ariel is a spirit of 
the air, Caliban is a spirit of the earth. He 
is a sort of man-beast, brutal, coarse, ma¬ 
licious, devoid of moral sense; but he is 
not vulgar. The difference between Cali¬ 
ban and depraved human nature is clearly 
seen when he is associated with the drunk¬ 
en and vulgar characters, Stephano and 
Trinculo. The character of Caliban has 
furnished material for much learned dis¬ 
cussion; possibly, however, not enough to 
warrant the statement made in the follow¬ 
ing quotation from Furness: 

If the depth of an impression made by an 
imaginary character may be gauged by the litera¬ 
ture which that character calls forth, then must 
Hamlet and Falstaff admit Caliban to a place 
between them. An eminent professor (Wilson) 
has devoted a stout octavo volume to the proof 
that in Caliban we find the exact “link” which, 
in any scheme of evolution, is “missing” between 
man and the anthropoids; the late and honored 
Mr. Robert Browning has given utterance to 
the theological speculations which he imagined 
might have visited Caliban’s darkened and lonely 
soul; and a brilliant member of the French 
Institute, of world-wide fame, has written a 
philosophical drama bearing the name of Caliban. 
No other unreal character, except the two I have 
mentioned, Hamlet and Falstaff, has called forth 
such noteworthy or such voluminous tributes. 


As Schlegel says, “The delineation of this 
man monster is throughout marvellously pro¬ 
found and consistent,” and, notwithstanding all, 
“the modesty of nature” is not outraged.—Smea- 
ton. 

Calico, a light cotton cloth of the class 
called print. It is chiefly used for women’s 
and children’s dresses and aprons. The 
name is from Calicut, a town in India, 
noted at one time for the manufacture of 
this kind of cloth. As distinguished from 
gingham, and other cloth dyed in the 
thread, calico is woven in white and is 
printed in desired colors on one side of the 
web. As distinguished from other grades 
of printed cotton, dimity, percale, and cre¬ 
tonne, calico is a coarse but light fabric. 
It is finished usually with starch which 
gives it a gloss and an appearance of firm¬ 
ness and “body.” 

The Dutch East India Company intro¬ 
duced calico into Europe. The art of 
making it gained a footing first in Holland. 
In 1676 calico printing became establish¬ 
ed on the Thames, near London; in 1738, 



CALIFORNIA 


Glasgow, where it is still a staple man¬ 
ufacture ; and at a later date at Birming¬ 
ham. d he first cotton mills were erected 
in the United States at Pawtucket, Rhode 
Island, in 1790. 

There are two classes of calico printers 

those who weave their cloth and print 
it, selling their product directly to job¬ 
bers, and those who merely print the pat¬ 
tern at piece-price. There are two grades 
of calico, called 64 X 64 and 56 X 60. 
These figures indicate the number of 
threads to the inch. The first number in 
each set gives the number of threads in 
the warp, and the second number gives 
the number in the weft. The webs are 
inspected carefully for flaws, and are then 
stitched together in lengths of 300 yards 
ready for printing, which involves the vari¬ 
ous processes of singeing, bleaching, and 
shearing, besides the actual imprinting of 
patterns. 

The variety of colors, tints, shades, and 
combinations is limited apparently only by 
the limits of human ingenuity. The prep¬ 
aration of the dyes or colored inks is a 
science. If a visitor were to go through 
any of the large cotton mills, he would 
come upon the chemist and his vats, and 
might learn much of madder styles, steam 
styles, indigo styles, turkey red styles, 
bronze styles, aniline colors, and of mor¬ 
dants, baths, acids, dyewoods, extracts, 
chromates, clays, pigments, and bleaches. 
The chemist in calico works needs to know 
not only how to make his dyes give the 
exact colors desired, but he must be a stu¬ 
dent of all possible coloring materials. He 
must know how to make his colors with¬ 
stand washing, and what ingredients will 
give the desired color without injury to 
the cotton. 

After printing, the cloth passes through 
certain finishing processes. It is starched, 
evened, and pressed. It is then folded into 
laps and is ready for market. 

California, the most southerly of the 
Pacific states. Area, 158,297 square miles, 
equivalent to that of New England, New 
York, and Pennsylvania. It is exceeded 
in size by Texas only. The extreme 
length from northwest to southeast is about 
775 miles, equal to the distance from Bos¬ 


ton to Chicago or to Charleston. The 
greatest width is about 235 miles. Within 
this vast territory there is the greatest di¬ 
versity of scenery, rainfall, temperature, 
soil, and productions. It is difficult to 
characterize a state in which a single coun¬ 
ty has mountain summits above the snow 
line at one end and orange groves at the 
other. It is difficult to name a fruit, flow¬ 
er, vegetable, or field crop found elsewhere 
in the United States that does not find a 
suitable locality somewhere in California. 

Mountains. The Coast Range, from 
3,200 to 5,000 feet in height, follows the 
coast from Oregon southward about two- 
thirds the length of the state. The Sierra 
Nevada range marks approximately the 
eastern bulwark of the state. Although 
geologists say that it has been worn down 
until it has lost a mile of its height, it is 
still the steepest and loftiest range of 
mountains in the United States. Mt. Whit¬ 
ney, 14,502 feet high, is our highest peak 
outside of Alaska. The lowest pass in 
this range is 4,995 feet above the sea 
level. The famous Yosemite Valley is 
in this range. In places the western slope 
falls 10,000 feet in ten miles. A belt 
varying in width, but averaging perhaps 
thirty miles, is entirely above the snow line. 
There are perhaps 100 small glaciers. The. 
Siskiyou Range to which Mt. Shasta be¬ 
longs, in the north, and the Tehachapi in 
the south are the connecting links between 
the Sierra Nevada and the Coast Range, 
and divide the interior of California into 
two great basins. The larger of these, 
drained by the Sacramento River and its 
branches, has but one outlet, the Golden 
Gate, through which its waters make their 
way to the Pacific Ocean. 

Climate. Shielded by mountains on 
the north and east, California has but two 
seasons, a wet and a dry. Hurricanes and 
cyclones are unknown. Beginning with 
May, rain is practically unknown for six 
months. Sacks of wheat are left in the 
field, and fruit is spread to dry without 
the slightest danger from rain. The annual 
rainfall near the Oregon line east of the 
Coast Range is about 8 inches. At San 
Francisco, it is about 24, at Los Angeles, 
15 inches. At Yuma, in the extreme 


CALIFORNIA 


desert southeast, it seldom amounts to 3 
inches. In this part of the state lies the 
Death Valley, 270 feet below the level of 
the sea. It derives its name from the scar¬ 
city of life. 

Forest Trees. The forests of Cali¬ 
fornia, consisting chiefly of the redwood of 
the coast range, the big tree of the Sierras, 
the sugar pine, the Douglas spruce, the in¬ 
cense tree, and the silver fir, are second 
only to those of Oregon in value. In the 
southern and central parts of the state 
millions of pepper trees from Peru and 
eucalyptus from Australia have been set out 
for fuel and for ornament. 

Agriculture. Agriculture and fruit 
raising were introduced into California by 
Spanish missionaries. Vast cattle ranges 
and sheep ranches formerly existed in 
southern California. Mrs. Jackson’s Ra¬ 
mona gives an excellent picture of sheep 
farming. Within the last fifteen years these 
great ranches have been broken up into 
small farms. The enormous wheat farms 
of twenty years ago have also been divided 
into small holdings. There are still a few 
large farms containing thousands of acres. 
Three factors, the introduction of fruit 
raising, the difficulty of obtaining farm 
help, and the construction of irrigating 
ditches, have combined to favor the small 
farm. A farm of ten or twenty acres is 
about all that anyone can handle properly 
or needs to have. Over 5,000 miles of 
canals and ditches have been constructed 
to conduct the waters of the mountains 
to the valleys below where it is needed. 
Land that was formerly worthless has been 
converted into fertile fields. Alfalfa yields 
easily six crops a year. In irrigated valleys 
crop failures are unknown. What is known 
as dry farming in which the moisture from 
the winter rains is conserved by frequent 
cultivation, is adding greatly to the pro¬ 
ductive area in the state. Were it not for 
insect pests California could raise all the 
fruit the world needs. Of plum, prune, 
peach, apricot, apple, pear, and cherry trees, 
there are about 28,000,000, with an average 
annual yield valued at fifty cents each. 
Southern California, of which Los Angeles 
is the metropolis, is one of the most famous 
orange, lemon, and olive regions in the 


world. In 1910, 93,000 carloads of these 
fruits were shipped to eastern markets. It 
is estimated that there are 33,000,000 fruit 
trees of all kinds in California and 240,- 
000,000 grape vines. Grapes are produced 
in nearly every county. The annual yield 
may be placed at 42,500,000 gallons of 
wine, and 140,000,000 pounds of raisins. 
The quantity of fresh grapes shipped in 
baskets is almost beyond computation. In 
1910 California packers put up 4,008,549 
cases of canned fruits and vegetables. 

Named in order of importance, the prin¬ 
cipal crops are orchard products, with the 
deciduous fruits first and citrus fruits sec¬ 
ond ; grains, with barley in the lead, fol¬ 
lowed by wheat, oats, corn, rye and other 
grain; grass, hay and alfalfa; vineyard 
products, including table grapes, raisins, 
wine and brandy; dairy products; vege¬ 
tables ; and poultry products. The value 
of field and orchard products for 1910 was 
$285,000,000. 

Mining. Attention was called to Cal¬ 
ifornia first by the discovery of gold in 
1848. Up to that time the United States 
had produced less than $12,000,000 worth 
of gold. The annual yield of California 
alone was over $30,000,000 for a long se¬ 
ries of years, and it is still about $18,000,- 
000 a year. The highest production for any 
one year was $81,294,700. Named in or¬ 
der of importance, the minerals produced 
are petroleum, gold, copper, cement, clay, 
asphalt, macadam. California is deficient 
in hardwood and in coal. Large deposits 
of iron ore await development. 

Manufactures. The discovery of pe¬ 
troleum in abundance has stimulated man¬ 
ufacture. The leading manufactures are 
sugar, meats, machinery, clothing, books, 
liquors, baker’s products, canned fruits and 
vegetables, and leather. Mountain torrents 
are now being utilized to generate electric¬ 
ity. It is transmitted long distances to 
drive machinery. 

Education. California has taken ad¬ 
vanced ground in establishing a system of 
education. Common schools, normal 
schools, technical schools, and a state uni¬ 
versity have a reputation second to none in 
the Union. The state university situated at 
Berkeley opposite San Francisco is one of 


CALIFORNIA—CALIGULA 


America’s great state universities. Its in¬ 
come from various sources is about $600,- 
000 per annum. Wealthy citizens, particu¬ 
larly Mrs. Phoebe Hearst, have contributed 
large sums for the construction of buildings 
and to endow chairs. Leland Stanford, 
Junior, University, founded by Senator and 
Mrs. Stanford in memory of their son, is 
also an institution of world-wide reputation. 
It stands in the front rank as to scholar¬ 
ship and equipment. The Lick Astronomi¬ 
cal observatory near San Jose, and the Mt. 
Wilson observatory near Pasadena, are 
among the most noted in the world. 

Sacramento is the capital of California, 
San Francisco, the metropolis, and Los 
Angeles, the second city in size. The popu¬ 
lation of California in 1910 was 2,377,549. 

In 1911, California adopted woman suf¬ 
frage, the referendum and the recall. 

Statistics. The. following statistics 
are the latest to be had from trustworthy 


sources: 

v 


Land area, sq. miles. 

Population, 1910 . 

San Francisco . 

Los Angeles. 

Oakland . 

Sacramento . 

Berkeley . 

San Diego .. 

Pasadena . 

San Jose . 

Stockton . 

Alameda . 

Fresno . 

No. counties . 

Members of state senate . 

Representatives . 

Salary of governor . 

United States representatives 

Presidential electors . 

Assessed valuation of property... 

Bonded indebtedness . 

Acres under irrigation . 

Agricultural Products— 

Corn, bushels . 

Wheat, bushels . 

Oats, bushels . 

Barley, bushels . 

Wine, gallons . 

Wool clip, pounds. 

Fruit shipments, cars. 

Beet sugar, pounds . 

Farm crops including fruits. 

Domestic Animals— 

Horses . 

Mules . 

Milk cows .. 

Other cattle . 


156,092 
... 2,377,549 

416,912 
319,198 
150,174 
44,696 
40,434 
39,578 
30,291 
28,946 
23,253 
23,383 
24,892 
57 
40 
80 

$10,000 

11 

13 

.$2,373,897,092 
$4,881,500 
.... 3,876,000 

... 1,838,000 

... 17,100,000 
... 8,325,000 

... 43,400,000 
... 42,500,000 
... 15,500,000 
93,349 
. .. 289,494,000 
. $240,000,000 

425,000 
80,000 
500,000 
... 1 , 100,000 


Sheep . 2,200,000 

Swine . 500,000 

Forest reserve, acres . 22,000,000 

Fisheries, value of. $2,861,632 

Miles of railway . 7,645 

Manufacturing establishments .... 6,839 

Capital invested. $282,000,000 

Operatives . 100,000 

Raw material . $215,000,000 

Output of manufactured goods. $367,000,000 

Petroleum . $32,398,000 

Gold . $20,237,300 

Copper . $8,478,000 

Cement . $4,968,000 

Clay . $3,514,000 

Macadam . $1,636,125 

Mineral Products . $82,972,209 

Savings banks deposits. $331,615,815 

Teachers in public schools. 10,222 

Pupils enrolled . 348,093 

Percentage of male teachers . 12.5 

Average monthly salary of men 

teachers .. $112.04 

Average monthly salary of women 

teachers . $76.06 

Average annual expenditure per 

pupil . $59.51 


California, Gulf of, an arm of the Pa¬ 
cific extending between the peninsula of 
Lower California and the mainland of 
Mexico. Length, 700 miles; breadth at 
the entrance, 130 miles. Very little navi¬ 
gation is carried on there. See Colorado 
River; Salton Sea. 

Caligula, ka-lig'u-la,Caius Caesar Au¬ 
gustus Germanicus (12-41 A. D.), the 
third emperor of Rome. He was a nephew 
of the emperor Tiberius, whom he suc¬ 
ceeded. He was twenty-five years old when 
he came to the throne. At first his rule 
was mild, and he won popularity by his 
lavish generosity, but he shortly began to 
display a cruelty and capriciousness which 
can scarcely be explained except by the 
theory that he was insane. His relatives 
and subjects were murdered or banished 
without cause. He amused himself while 
dining by having his victims tortured to 
death in his presence. He gave a banquet 
on a bridge he had built over the Bay 
of Baiae, and closed the festive scene by 
having some of the guests thrown into the 
sea. He declared himself a god, and made 
his horse a priest. He was at last assas¬ 
sinated by a conspiracy of his citizens. The 
name Caligula means Little Boot and was 
a nickname given him in camp on account 
of the soldier’s boots he wore. 



























































CALIPH—CALLAO 


Caliph or Calif, ka'lif, a name given 

to the successor of Mohammed in the gov¬ 
ernment of the faithful and in the high 
priesthood. The name is Arabic and 
means successor or deputy. The power 
of the caliph was absolute in both civil and 
religious matters, as long as he ruled in 
conformity with the Koran and traditions. 
The caliph must be a male adult, a free¬ 
man, and sane. It was expected that he 
be a learned divine, a powerful ruler, a 
just person, and that he belong to the 
Koreish, or tribe to which Mohammed 
himself belonged. Some authorities claim 
that he must belong to the family of Mo¬ 
hammed, and consequently maintain that 
since the first five caliphs none have been 
entitled to the name, but are merely gov¬ 
ernors. 

The caliph in his office of high priest 
began the public prayers every Friday in 
the chief mosque, and delivered the ser¬ 
mon. He was obliged to lead the pilgrims 
to Mecca in person and to march at the 
head of the armies of his empire. He 
rode to the mosque mounted on a mule, and 
the Seljukian sultan held his stirrup and 
led the mule until notified by a sign from 
the caliph that he might himself mount on 
horseback. From a window of the caliph’s 
palace hung always a piece of black vel¬ 
vet thirty feet or more in length called the 
“caliph’s sleeve.” This was kissed daily 
with great respect by the grandees of the 
court. 

The succession to the caliphate often oc¬ 
casioned much excitement. There were 
various insurrections and dissatisfaction 
among individuals. Many caliphs met 
with violent deaths. In 1517 the caliphate 
passed over to the nin+h of the Ottoman 
dynasty of Turkish sultans, and the title is 
still vested in the sultan of the Ottoman 
Empire. The Mohammedan princes ap¬ 
point a particular officer in their respect¬ 
ive dominions to sustain the sacred au¬ 
thority of the caliph. In Turkey he is 
called a mufti; in Persia, a sadne. 

Soon after the battle of Tours, little 
more than a hundred years after the death 
of Mohammed, the world of the Moslems 
was rent. Islam extended from Persia and 
the far East, along the southern coast of 


the Mediterranean, and across the Straits of 
Gibraltar into Spain. Geographical con¬ 
ditions and personal ambition split this ex¬ 
tended empire into two divisions, an east¬ 
ern and a western, just as similar factors 
split Christendom into an eastern and a 
western empire. In the day of Charle¬ 
magne, we find two caliphates. Haroun- 
al-Rashid, the friend of Charlemagne, 
built his luxurious capital, Bagdad, on the 
Tigris; the caliph of the West built up 
Cordova in Spain. Historians have not 
failed to point out the loss of momentum 
that followed the Mohammedan division 
and the corresponding degree of safety 
that came to Christendom. 

Calking, kauk'ing, the art of-making 
the seams of wooden ships water-tight. By 
means of a dull, thin instrument and a 
mallet, the calker drives loose, tarry oak¬ 
um, usually untwisted rope, cotton, or the 
like, into the cracks or seams between the 
planks of a ship’s bottom and sides to pre¬ 
vent the entrance of water. After the 
crevice is driven full a coating of hot, 
melted pitch is applied to the seam. 

Calla, a favorite house plant of African 
origin. Though called a calla lily it is 
not a lily at all, but a relative of jack- 
in-the-pulpit. A column of flowers, known 
as a spadix, rises in the center of a cup¬ 
shaped leaf which is prolonged at one end 
to a tip. This leaf or spathe is really no 
part of the flower, but its spotless, lily¬ 
like whiteness, in most species, has given 
the name. One kind, very numerous in the 
Nile, is called the lily of the Nile. The 
spathe of one species is pink, and there is 
a black calla as well. A small greenish 
calla grows wild in the tamarack swamps 
and streams of eastern North America, as 
well as in Europe and Asia. Calla plants 
for the house should be started in late sum¬ 
mer from dry tubers. Botanists do not class 
the house plants among the callas. 

Calla'o, the chief seaport of Peru. Lat¬ 
itude 12° S. The town is situated on a 
commodious harbor, and is commanded by 
Callao Castle, the last fortification to be 
held by Spain in South America. Callao 
has been bombarded by Chile and by Spain. 
In 1746 an earthquake wave carried ships 
ashore, landed a frigate far inland, and 


CALLIMACHUS—CALLISTO 


drowned 4,600 people. The foreign trade 
of Peru centers at Callao. On an average 
two ocean going steamships land daily. 
Callao is the starting point of the Callao 
Oroya Railway, the loftiest railway in 
the world. The chief exports are cotton, 
sugar, leather goods, gums, guano, wool, 
metals, and minerals. Over half a million 
dollars’ worth of cocaine is prepared and 
exported. Callao is headquarters for qui¬ 
nine, alpaca, and llama wool. About one- 
fourth of the total business of Callao is 
transacted with the United States. A half 
of it goes to London and other British 
ports. The population is about 40,000. 

Callimachus, ka-lim'a-kus, an Alexan¬ 
drian critic, poet, and grammarian. He 
was born at Cyrene, Africa, during the 
third century B. C. Under Ptolemy Phil- 
adelphus, Callimachus became chief libra¬ 
rian of the Alexandrian Library. He left 
six hymns to the gods and many epigrams. 
Of his elegiacs, however, which were his 
most famous writings, only fragments re¬ 
main. Callimachus was one in whom “in¬ 
genious, elegant, and harmonious versifica¬ 
tion took the place of higher poetry.” He 
may be regarded as the first representative 
of the learned poetry of Alexandria. See 
Alexandria. 

QUOTATIONS. 

A great book is a great evil. 

He but sleeps 

The holy sleep, say not that the good man dies. 
All hail! Thrice hail! We pray thee to dispense 
Virtue and wealth to us, wealth varying 
For virtue’s naught, mere virtue’s no defense 
Then send us virtue hand in hand with compe¬ 
tence. —Hymn to Jove . 

Callimachus takes up this part of earth, 

A man much famed for poesy and mirth. 

—Epitaph of Callimachus, written by himself. 

Calliope, kal-ll'o-pe, in Greek my¬ 
thology, the muse of epic poetry. She was 
the daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne, the 
goddess of Memory, and the mother of 
Orpheus. Calliope presided over elo¬ 
quence. She was represented wearing a 
crown of laurel, holding in one hand a 
truippet, in the other an epic poem. The 
literal meaning of the name Calliope is 
beautiful voiced, whence the name of the 
musical instrument (commonly pronounc¬ 
ed kalTT-op) beloved of the circus goer. 


Callirrhoe, ka-lir'o-e, a name of fre¬ 
quent occurrence in Greek legend. Perhaps 
the most noted was Callirrhoe, the daugh¬ 
ter of Achelous, a river god. She became 
the wife of Alcmaeon. Alcmaeon had 
slain his mother Eriphyle in obedience to 
an oracle. He then left Argos that he 
might be purified from his crime in the 
water of the Achelous. Here he met and 
married Callirrhoe. She knew that Eri¬ 
phyle had once possessed a magic peplus 
and necklace, and she was determined to 
have them for her own. Alcmaeon had 
left them in Arcadia. Much against his 
will he went after them to please his wife, 
but on his return was waylaid and killed. 
Another Callirrhoe was a maiden of Caly- 
don. She was wooed by Coresus, the priest 
of Bacchus. She rejected his suit. Bac¬ 
chus, in punishment, sent madness upon 
the people of Calydon. An oracle declar¬ 
ed that the plague could not be averted un¬ 
less Callirrhoe was sacrificed upon the al¬ 
tar. But Coresus, about to perform the 
sacrifice, was moved by love of Callirrhoe 
and gave himself in her stead. Touched 
by his devotion, she took her own life near 
a well, which was called thereafter by her 
name. The name has been given by botan¬ 
ists to several species of poppy mallows, 
rose, red, cherry, lilac, and white, gathered 
by children from Minnesota to Texas. See 
Alcmaeon. 

Callisto, in Greek mythology, an Ar¬ 
cadian nymph. Zeus admired Callisto and 
the jealous Hera changed her into a bear. 
Callisto was very unhappy in this new form. 
She was afraid of the other wild beasts, 
even of other bears, and she was lonely. 
At last she saw her own son, Areas, ap¬ 
proaching. She sprang forward to embrace 
him; but Areas, not recognizing his moth¬ 
er, was about to slay her with his spear, 
when Zeus in pity snatched them up, and 
changing Arca§ too into a bear, set them 
both in the sky, where they formed the con¬ 
stellations of the Great and Little Bear. 
Hera was incensed that such an honor 
should come to Callisto as a result of her 
punishment. She went to Tethys and 
Oceanus, who ruled the ocean, and begged 
them to help her. They could do little, 
but they forbade the Great Bear and the 


CALL OF THE HOUSE—CALUMET 


Little Bear to come into their waters. So 
these two constellations move round and 
round in the heavens; but never sink, as do 
other stars, below the ocean. 

There is considerable diversity in the 
stories of Callisto told by different writ¬ 
ers. The foregoing account is Ovid’s ver¬ 
sion of the tale. According to others, Cal¬ 
listo was an attendant of Artemis and was 
changed by her into a bear, and her son 
given to Maia to bring up. Another story 
is that Artemis herself killed the bear Cal¬ 
listo, and that she was transplanted to the 
skies as the constellation of the Great Bear, 
while Areas was changed to Arcturus in the 
constellation called Bootes, or the Watcher 
of the Bear. This is consistent with the 
story of Cynosura, who was transformed 
into the Little Bear. 

Milton in II Penseroso alludes to the 
fact that the constellations of the Bear 
never disappear below the horizon: 

Let my lamp, at midnight hour 
Be seen in some high, lonely tower, 
Where I may oft outwatch the Bear. 

See Cynosura. 

Call of the House, a roll-call in a 
parliamentary body to ascertain what mem¬ 
bers are absent without leave. In the Unit¬ 
ed States Congress a call may be ordered 
at any time. In the British Parliament the 
rules require that notice of several days 
be given. A member of Congress may be 
expelled for neglect to attend. In this way 
even a minority may require the presence 
of enough members to do business. 

Calmucks, or Kalmucks, a nomadic 
people of Mongolian stock, inhabiting parts 
of Russia, Siberia, and China. They are ac¬ 
tive and well proportioned, with short chin, 
high cheekbones, upturned nose, oblique 
eyes, and scanty beard. They raise cattle, 
sheep, and horses. They move from place 
to place with change of season. Their 
homes are conical felt houses, which they 
set up in rows when they encamp. The 
Calmucks appeared on the Volga in 1630. 
They plundered for a time, but succumbed 
to Russian authority. A century later, 
1771, to be more exact, one of their chief¬ 
tains became dissatisfied and organized an 
exodus at a given date. They were off,— 
120,000 men, women, and children,—with 


their horses and herds for China. The 
Cossacks hung on their rear and other 
tribes harassed them on the march. A 
wretched horde reached the banks of a 
Chinese river and were settled by the Chi¬ 
nese emperor. The story is told graphic¬ 
ally in De Quincey’s Flight of a Tartar 
Tribe. A considerable section of £he Kal¬ 
mucks was unable to cross the Volga in 
time to join the flight. Their descend¬ 
ants still dwell on the Volga. The Rus¬ 
sian and Chinese Calmucks are estimated 
variously at from 70,000 to 200,000. 

Calomel, a white powdery compound 
of mercury and chlorine. It is without 
smell or taste, and cannot be dissolved in 
water, alcohol, or ether. It is prepared by 
heating corrosive sublimate with mercury 
and common salt. The drug is highly pois¬ 
onous. In minute doses it is used exten¬ 
sively in medicine for inflammation of the 
serous membrane, and as a substitute for 
Epsom salts. Veterinary surgeons use it as 
a caustic to cleanse wounds, and for thrush 
in the frog of a horse’s foot. See Mer¬ 
cury; Medicine. 

Calor'ic, a term applied to the fluid for¬ 
merly considered the basis of heat. A hot 
body was thought to have considerable 
caloric in it, while a cold body had but 
little. Caloric was considered as being 
matter but without weight. This materi¬ 
alistic theory of heat was finally over¬ 
thrown by the experiments of Rumford 
and Davy, who clearly showed that heat 
which could be produced in unlimited 
quantities by friction could hardly be mat¬ 
ter. The term in a general sense is often 
used as synonymous with heat. 

CaTorie, the unit of heat in scientific 
usage, defined as the amount required to 
raise the temperature of one kilogram of 
water from 0°C to 1°C. The heat re¬ 
quired to raise 1 gram through the same 
range of temperature is called a lesser 
calorie. 

Calumet, the pipe of peace used by 
the Indians of North America. The bowl 
was made of some sort of soapstone, or 
of red pipestone. A long reed served for 
a stem. On all ceremonial occasions the 
calumet was passed from hand to hand. 
When met to make a treaty, the warriors sat 


CALVARY—CAMASS 


in a circle. The pipe was passed around 
gravely; each warrior took a few whiffs as 
a sign of friendship. When the terms of 
the treaty had been arranged the pipe 
went around from hand to hand again. 
Each warrior or chieftain took a whiff or 
two to indicate his agreement to the terms. 
If he passed the pipe without smoking he 
declared his dissent. In this way a vote 
was taken. The calumet was also passed 
around the circle as a token that warriors 
going out to battle would stand or fall 
together. 

Break the red stone from this quarry, 

Mould and make it into Peace-Pipes, 

Take the reeds that grow beside you. 

Deck them with your brightest feathers. 
Smoke the calumet together. 

And as brothers live henceforward ! 

—Longfellow, The Song of Hiawatha. 

Calvary, Mount, a small eminence 
near the city of Jerusalem on the road to 
Damascus. It is noted in sacred history as 
the place of the crucifixion of Jesus 
Christ. In the Hebrew original, the word 
was Golgotha, signifying a skull. It was 
the common place of execution for crimi¬ 
nals. See Jerusalem. 

Calvin, John (1509-1564), a religious 
leader of the sixteenth century. A native 
of Picardy. As a lad he was so fond of 
Latin and argument that his young friends 
nicknamed him the “accusative case.” Cal¬ 
vin was well educated. He was intended 
for the law, but was attracted by the 
new doctrines of the Reformation and be¬ 
gan to preach in Paris. When active 
repressive measures were taken by Francis 
I, Calvin fled in the disguise of a work¬ 
ingman—finally to Geneva, where, with 
the exception of a short banishment spent 
at Strasburg, he spent the rest of his life 
preaching and writing. His particular 
doctrines are known as Calvinism. They 
were held by the Church of Scotland, the 
Puritans, and by the various branches 
of Presbyterianism everywhere. One of 
these doctrines is predestination, as op¬ 
posed to the Arminian doctrine of free will. 
The reader may consult a Westminster 
Shorter Catechism for details. 

Calvin was earnest, able, and learned. 
Life was too serious to be frittered away in 
fun. He is the hard, strong, intellectual, 


unyielding, unamiable, arbitrary, yet hero¬ 
ic Puritan of the Reformation. The one 
great blot on his fame is his responsibility 
for the judicial murder of Servetus, a re¬ 
former whose doctrines were at variance 
with his own, and with whom he had been 
engaged in bitter controversy. Servetus 
was a Spanish physician living at Vienne, 
a town on the Rhone, below Geneva. He 
was arrested by the Catholics there, partly 
on charges of heresy furnished by Calvin. 
Servetus escaped their hands and took ref¬ 
uge at Geneva. Here he was arrested by 
Calvin’s congregation and tried for heresy. 
Plis writings were tied to his girdle and 
were burned with him at the stake. Such 
was the savagery and bitterness of theologi¬ 
cal controversy. 

See Presbyterians; Netherlands; 
Catechism; Servetus; Knox. 

Calydonian Hunt. See Meleager. 

Calypso, ka-lip'so, in Greek mytholo¬ 
gy, a sea nymph. She was variously said 
to be the daughter of Atlas, of Nereus, 
and of Oceanus. She dwelt alone on the 
wooded island Ogygia, remote from both 
gods and men. During his wanderings af¬ 
ter the Trojan War, Ulysses reached this 
island. He was hospitably received by 
the nymph, who straightway fell in love 
with him and strove by every art she 
knew to keep him from leaving her. She 
promised him perpetual youth and immor¬ 
tality. For seven years she was success¬ 
ful in holding the recreant. Then Zeus 
interfered and commanded Calypso to send 
Ulysses on his way. Having fitted him 
out with a raft, provisions, and a breeze to 
waft him on, she sorrowfully bade him 
farewell. Later, when Telemachus, son 
of Ulysses, went in search of his father, 
he, too, stopped at Calypso’s isle. Again 
Calypso tried to hold her guest, but Mi¬ 
nerva, who, disguised as Mentor, accom¬ 
panied Telemachus, influenced him to 
withstand Calypso’s allurements. The two 
escaped from the island by jumping from 
a cliff into the sea and swimming to a ship 
which lay becalmed at a little distance. 

Camass, a liliaceous plant of North 
America related to the scilla of European 
gardens. There are several species. The 
name is an Indian word applied to a 


CAMBRIC—CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY 


species found in the moist meadows of the 
Rocky Mountain region and westward. It 
has long, thin leaves and a scape, terminat¬ 
ing in an open raceme of blue flowers. 
The Indian squaws collect the bulbs in 
large quantities for food. Their chief ri¬ 
val is a pouched gopher called locally the 
camass-rat. 

Cambric, properly a fine variety of 
plain woven linen. For more than a cen¬ 
tury, however, the name has been given 
to a thin calendered muslin, originally 
made in Scotland in imitation of the linen 
cambric. In 1520 a fine linen cloth was 
produced at Cambrai, or Cambray, France. 
It was called cambric from the name of 
the city. A sixteenth century historian 
tells us that it was “so fine that the 
greatest thread was not so big as the small¬ 
est hair that is.” It was much used for 
fine ruffs, kerchiefs, shirts, and undergar¬ 
ments. The first cotton imitation was 
called cambric-muslin. Cambric is finished 
frequently with a luster. It is thinner and 
finer than common muslin. It is used for 
women’s underwear, infants’ clothing, etc. 
A cheap cotton fabric dyed in plain colors 
is also called cambric. It is used for 
linings and is of two varieties, kid-finished 
and glazed. The latter is called sqmetimes 
paper cambric. It is put up usually in 
rolls, as a fold is apt to form a permanent 
crease. See Calendering. 

Cambridge, kam'brij, a city of Massa¬ 
chusetts. It joins Boston on the north, be¬ 
ing just across the Charles River. Cam¬ 
bridge is noted as the seat of Harvard Uni¬ 
versity, and of Radcliffe College for women. 
It has been the home of many literary and 
influential people and has many points of 
historic interest to the visitor. The old elm 
under which Washington took command of 
the American Army is here; the house which 
was Washington’s headquarters and later 
the home of the poet, Longfellow; Low¬ 
ell’s home, Elmwood; and Mount Auburn 
Cemetery, one of America’s most beauti¬ 
ful burial places. Cambridge has many 
large and important manufactories. Among 
its products are glass, shoes, rubber goods, 
soap, carriages, candles, chemicals, ink, 
blacking, furniture, pianos and organs, 
telescopes, boilers, and steam engines. 


There are mercantile houses, printing 
houses, and book binderies. Here was pub¬ 
lished the first book ever brought out in the 
United States. The schools of Cambridge 
rank among the best in the country. There 
is a large public library. Other places of 
interest are the Harvard Observatory and 
the botanical gardens. The population of 
Cambridge in 1910 was 104,839. 

Cambridge University, one of the 
great English institutions of learning. It 
is situated at Cambridge in the shire of 
that name on the River Cam, about fifty 
miles north of London. It rivals Oxford. 
The town has a population of about 40,000, 
but it is given over chiefly to the universi¬ 
ty. There are seventeen affiliated colleges. 
The first, that of St. Peter’s, was founded 
in 1284; the last, Downing, in 1800. The 
officers, fellows, and students of the en¬ 
tire university number about 4,000. The 
affairs of the university are administered by 
a chancellor and a senate. Each college 
has its private rules and regulations, but, 
in general, the college organization in¬ 
cludes eight orders. 

1. The head or master, provost or presi¬ 

dent, as he is variously called. 

2. Fellows,—from twelve to sixty gradu¬ 

ates who receive an allowance from 
the college funds of from $750 to 
$1,250 a year. They are privileged 
to reside or to travel. The award is 
usually for the period of six years. 

3. Noblemen graduates,—professors, and 

masters of various departments who 
do not receive fellowships. 

4. Bachelors of the various departments. 

5. Fellow commoners,—students of means 

who pay large fees. They are entitled 
to wear silk robes and to dine at the 
fellows’ table. The sons of noblemen 
and of wealthy men are ranked here. 

6. Scholars,—students who receive a 

small award from the funds of the 
college for proficiency in scholarship. 

7. Pensioners,—the main body of students. 

8. Sizars,—needy students receiving as¬ 

sistance from various funds estab¬ 
lished for the purpose. 

A master of arts of Cambridge is called 
a cantab, an abbreviation for the Latin 
name of the university. 


CAMBYSES—CAMEL 


The students of each college reside with¬ 
in its buildings or in lodgings approved 
by authority. Each college is governed by 
its head and fellows. A member of the 
faculty is not necessarily a member of the 
governing body. The university library 
contains half a million volumes. The vari¬ 
ous colleges have fine laboratories and ad¬ 
equate equipment for the work undertaken. 
To the American, however, the various 
rules, and especially the favors accorded 
wealth, seem very undemocratic and irk¬ 
some. The atmosphere at Cambridge is de¬ 
cidedly classical. Under certain restrictions 
women may attend lectures, and, if success¬ 
ful in their examinations, may receive cer¬ 
tificates of scholarship, but are not granted 
degrees. The university sends two mem¬ 
bers to Parliament. Cambridge, Massachu¬ 
setts, the home of Harvard University, was 
named for the old town of Cambridge. 

Cambyses, kam-bl'sez, a king of the 
Medes and Persians, from 529 B. C. to 
522 B. C.: date of his birth is unknown. 
He was the son of Cyrus the Great, whom 
he succeeded on the throne. In 525 B. C. 
he invaded and conquered Egypt, but ex¬ 
peditions against the Ammonites and 
Ethiopians failed. Cambyses seemed to 
lose his mind over these disasters. At 
least his display of vindictiveness and 
cruelty thereafter has been accounted for 
in that way. At last revolution broke out; 
Cambyses, marching from Egypt against 
the usurper of his throne in Persia, was 
accidentally wounded on the way and died 
in Syria. Some accounts state that he took 
his own life. 

Camden, a city of New Jersey and the 
county seat of Camden County. It is sit¬ 
uated on the Delaware River opposite Phil¬ 
adelphia. Camden is an important ship¬ 
ping point, and has extensive ship yards. 
There are also foundries and manufactories 
of considerable importance, including 
among their products boots, shoes, oil¬ 
cloths, paints, chemicals, textile fabrics 
and machinery. Camden is on the At¬ 
lantic City, the West Jersey & Seashore, and 
the Pennsylvania railroads. Its popula¬ 
tion in 1910 was 94,538. 

Camel, the most important domestic 

animal of southwestern Asia. Naturalists 
II-2 


consider the camel the most ancient cud- 
chewing animal in existence—an older type 
than the giraffe—and place it at the end 
of the cud-chewing group nearest the thick- 
skinned animals. The camel family contains 
two groups. The Bactrian or two-humped 
camel and the Arabian or one-humped 
camel belong to the Old World; the llama 
and the alpaca, the quanaco and the vicuna 
of the Andes, belong to the New World. 
The camel’s colt stands about three feet 
high and attains a shoulder height of 
about seven feet at maturity. Its dura¬ 
tion of life is forty years or over. The 
camel does not refuse green pasturage, 
but it exceeds a goat in ability to live on 
the dry, prickly shrubs of the desert. 

Camels are wonderfully well fitted for 
life in hot, sandy countries. Unlike other 
cud-chewing animals, the camel’s foot is 
only partially cloven. Instead of a split 
foot shod with two hoofs, like those 
of a deer or an ox, the two toes of a camel 
rest on a broad, leathery, elastic pad that 
serves as a kind of “sand shoe,” and enables 
the camel to walk with ease over the soft 
sands of Arabia and the Sahara, where 
a hoofed animal sinks ankle deep at every 
step. The extreme tips of its toes are sepa¬ 
rated, and are shod with reduced hoofs 
much like claws. The camel’s backbone is 
entirely regular. Its hump is not a deform¬ 
ity of the spine but a storehouse. When 
forage is plentiful, the camel stores up fat 
and muscle in its hump to be drawn on for 
strength during long journeys or time of 
food scarcity. During hard trips these 
humps become empty, and must be re¬ 
stored by three or four months of rest and 
abundance before severe service is again 
undertaken. Long, thick, silky eye-lashes 
serve as a protection against the white 
glare of the sand and keep out whirling 
dust. The camel’s nostrils are long, nar¬ 
row slits. During a sand storm a camel 
lies down, stretches out his long neck on 
the sand, closes his eyes and nostrils, and 
waits for the suffocating dust cloud to 
blow past. Another wonderful provision 
of nature is a system of folds or water 
pouches in the walls of the first and second 
stomach. The largest of these pockets is 
not over three inches in diameter, but they 



Dromedary. CAMELS. Two-humped Bactrian camel. 








































ANIMALS OF THE CAMEL FAMILY 















CAMEL’S HAIR—CAMELOT 


are numerous and, when filled from the 
stomach by a drink at some oasis, they will 
serve their owner at need for a journey of 
four or five days to the next water supply. 
The strength of a camel’s back is prover¬ 
bial. Their ordinary capacity for carrying 
burdens is twice that of a packhorse, and 
the Bactrian camel is credited with carry¬ 
ing 1,000 or even 1,500 pounds for short 
distances. Of the two camels, the Arabian 
is lighter and better adapted to the deep 
sand and extreme heat of Syria and Af¬ 
rica ; the Bactrian is a coarser, stronger 
animal, better fitted for the mountain 
passes, stony pathways, and cold winters 
of central Asia. 

Camels are uncouth, awkward, and ill- 
tempered. They lack the docility of the ox, 
and do not possess the intelligence and the 
affectionate disposition of the horse; but 
without them large tracts of the Old 
World would be uninhabitable. Their milk 
and the flesh of the young serve the Arab 
for food; he uses their dung for fuel; he 
manufactures rugs, ropes„ garments, and 
tents from their hair; and he uses their 
hide for water bags and furniture. In a 
land where boats are unknown and roads 
are impossible, the Arab carries his family 
and his wares on the backs of camels. 
Thus this faithful animal furnishes food, 
fuel, shelter, and transportation for mil¬ 
lions of people. 

Prior to the Civil War a number of cam¬ 
els were imported for use in transporting 
army supplies in the “Great American Des¬ 
ert.” The experiment was reported suc¬ 
cessful. Some descendants of these cam¬ 
els, escaping the perils of Apaches and 
mountain lions, are, it is said, still to be 
found in Arizona, but the assertion rests on 
doubtful authority. Camels have been in¬ 
troduced into the arid regions of southern 
and western Australia, where they are used 
for beasts of burden. They carry bales of 
wool to market. 

The distribution of camels, Arabia and 
Morocco not included, is about as follows: 

Russia in Europe . 225,550 

Spain . 2,250 

British India . 442,301 

Cyprus . 11,169 

Russia in Asia . 678,622 

Algeria . 211,279 


Egypt . 40,000 

Sudan . 132,116 

Tunis . 147,229 

German Africa . 52 

Australia . 4,065 


Total . 1,884,583 


See Alpaca; Llama; Dromedary; 
Caravan. 

Camel’s Hair, the woolly hair shorn 
from the neck and back of the camel. 
There are two distinct grades. The under 
hair is fine. It is about one inch long, and 
is soft and silky. The outer hair, which 
completely covers the under hair on the 
neck and hump, is coarse, and is from 
three to four inches long. In Arabia and 
other eastern countries, camel’s hair is 
woven into a variety of stuffs, and forms 
the chief material for clothing and housing 
the inhabitants. The natural color is a 
light brown or tan, which is one of the 
distinguishing characteristics of genuine 
camel’s hair goods. The fiber imported 
into America and Europe is used princi¬ 
pally for the manufacture of fine dress 
goods and winter underwear. The long 
and short hairs are sometimes separated, 
but more frequently they are spun together. 
When the cloth is woven, some of these 
longer hairs become untwisted and appear 
on the surface, giving a shaggy appearance. 
Genuine camel’s hair fabrics are rarely seen 
in the American market. Two varieties of 
so-called camel’s hair cloth are common in 
our markets. One is a thick, shaggy fab¬ 
ric, retailing at about two dollars the yard. 
It is manufactured usually from fine 
sheep’s wool and may or may not have 
long hairs interspersed on the surface. The 
other is a thin, fine, wool textile named 
from its resemblance to the imported cash- 
mere shawls, improperly called camel’s hair 
shawls, and only an imitation of the mate¬ 
rial of these shawls. See Cashmere Shawl. 

Camelot, kam'e-lot, a legendary city 
in England where King Arthur’s palace 
was located. The Knights of the Round 
Table met here. There has been much dis¬ 
pute as to the site of Camelot. Shakespeare 
located Camelot in Wales, for the Earl of 
Kent in Shakespeare’s King Lear says: 

Goose, if I had you upon Sarum plain 

I’d drive ye cackling home to Camelot. 















CAMEO—CAMERON 


This has been interpreted as allusion 
to the fact that large quantities of geese 
were bred on the moors in Somersetshire. 
Consequently, Shakespeare is quoted as au¬ 
thority for locating the fabulous city in 
Somersetshire. Others identify it with 
Winchester. Caxton located it in Wales. 

Camelot is best known through Tenny¬ 
son’s use of it. The following description 
in prose was found among the poet’s papers 
after his death: 

On the latest limit of the West, in the land of 
Lyonnesse, where save the rocky Isles of Scilly, 
all is now wild sea, rose the sacred Mount of 
Camelot. It rose from the deeps, with gardens 
and bowers, and palaces, and at the top of the 
mount was King Arthur’s hall and the holy min¬ 
ster with the cross of gold. . . . The Mount was 
the most beautiful in the world, sometimes green 
and fresh in the beam of morning, sometimes 
all one splendor, folded in the golden mists of 
the West. But all underneath was hollow and 
the mountain trembled, when the seas rushed 
bellowing through the porphyry caves ; and there 
ran a prophecy that the mountain and the city 
on some wild morning would topple into the 
abyss and be no more. 

The Lady of Shalott begins with the 
lines: 

On either side the river lie 
Long fields of barley and of rye. 

That clothe the wold and meet the sky; 

And thro’ the field the road runs by 
To many-tower’d Camelot. 

The name Camelot is of constant 
recurrence in the poem. In the Idylls of 
the King, it is thus described: 

Camelot, a city of shadowy palaces 
And stately, rich in emblem and the work 
Of ancient kings who did their days in stone; 
Which Merlin’s hand, the Mage at Arthur’s court, 
Knowing all arts, had touch’d, and everywhere 
At Arthur’s ordinance, tipt with lessening peak 
And pinnacle, and had made it spire to heaven. 

See Arthur. 

Cameo, a gem cut away so that the 
figure stands out in relief. It is the op¬ 
posite in this respect to the intaglio in 
which the figure is a depression. If a 
cameo be pressed against wax it forms an 
intaglio, and, conversely, an intaglio 
pressed on wax forms a cameo impression. 
Cameo cutting is believed to have been 
practiced by the ancient Babylonians and 
Phoenicians. A cameo in an English col¬ 
lection, called the Cupid and Psyche, is 


believed to have been cut by a Greek not 
long after the death of Alexander the 
Great. The material most frequently used 
is the onyx and various kinds of shell. 
Artificial cameos are made of glass and 
other material. Florence, Italy, is cele¬ 
brated for cameos and intaglio cutting. 

Camera, the light-tight wooden box 
used by photographers in taking pictures. 
In one side is a lens through which the 
light from the object enters and focuses 
upon the sensitized plate or film in the 
rear. To give a clear-cut image, most 
cameras are made so that the lens may 
be moved out or in, or the box is a bel¬ 
lows which may be extended or shortened. 
The operator may thus adjust the focus by 
observing the image on a ground glass 
screen before the plate is inserted. When 
all adjustments are made, the exposure of 
the plate is effected by uncapping the lens 
for the time required by a mechanical de¬ 
vice known as a shutter, controlled by a 
lever or pneumatic bulb. 

The perfection attained in photography 
in recent years has made the camera a com¬ 
mon household article. The small, port¬ 
able one, known as a kodak is familiar to 
all. The folding pocket camera s a boon 
to the tourist. See Photographs 

Camera Lucida, a prism of gPss held 
in a frame. Its faces are cut a : * such 
an angle that an object lying at one side, 
when viewed through the prism, seems to 
lie on a sheet of paper directly under¬ 
neath. The instrument is much used in 
drawing natural objects. A pencil may be 
made to follow the apparent outline on 
the paper with ease. The pencil of light 
enters the prism horizontally, is totally re¬ 
fracted twice, and enters the eye, passing 
directly upward at right angles to the 
original direction. 

Cameron, Richard (1648-1680), a 
Scottish covenanter. When the Scottish 
Stuarts on the throne of England turned 
to the Catholic faith, he resisted their 
authority openly, and took to the hills and 
mosshags at the head of his followers. The 
government put a price on his head. He 
and his supporters were surrounded in a 
moss in Ayrshire and cut to pieces. Cam¬ 
eron’s head and hands were taken to 


CAMERON—CAMOENS 


Edinburgh. Under the name of the Cam- 
eronians his followers were long a separate 
sect in Scotland. The reformed Presby¬ 
terians claim to be the lineal successors 
of the Cameronians. See Covenanters ; 
Presbyterians. 

Cameron, Simon (1799-1889), an 
American senator. He was a native of 
Pennsylvania. He learned the printer’s 
trade, and in 1822 edited a paper in Har¬ 
risburg, supporting the candidacy of An¬ 
drew Jackson. He was elected to’ the 
United States Senate in 1845. In 1856 he 
joined the new Republican party formed 
after the repeal of the Missouri Com¬ 
promise, and was again elected to the 
Senate. He was secretary of war, March, 
1861, to January, 1862; minister to Rus¬ 
sia, 1862-63 ; and again a member of 
the Senate 1866-77. In 1877 he resigned 
and was succeeded by his son, J. Donald 
Cameron. 

Camoens, kam'6-ens, Luis de (Portu¬ 
guese spelling, camoes), ( 1524-1579), the 
most celebrated poet of Portugal. In a 
list of the world’s great men the name of 
Luis de Camoens would stand a long way 
from the top. For two reasons, however, 
his name is remembered, and his life’s story 
is interesting. First, he is the “chief and 
only boast of his country.” No other Por¬ 
tuguese poet has been celebrated outside 
of his own land. Moreover, the epic poem 
of Camoens is the only great epic since 
ancient times which has a truly national 
subject. Camoens was born, it is supposed, 
at Lisbon. His parents were of gentle 
birth and high social standing, but of 
little wealth. The family seems to have 
removed to Coimbra when Luis was about 
two years of age to escape a pestilence 
raging in Lisbon. Of Camoens’ early life 
little is known, except what may be in¬ 
ferred from his writings, where we learn 
that he wandered on the banks of the 
Mondego “careless and unfettered in the 
free license of boyhood.” His education 
was received at the University of Coimbra, 
where he showed signs of poetic talent and 
where, it is believed, he first conceived the 
idea of writing a national epic. 

On returning to Lisbon he was received 
at the court of John III, then king of 


Portugal. Here began the misfortunes of 
Camoens’ sorrowful career, due doubtless 
in the first instance to jealousy. I he young 
man was honest and fearless in expressing 
his opinions. He was witty, cultured, pos¬ 
sessed of poetic genius, and of some per¬ 
sonal comeliness. He was, moreover, a 
favorite with the ladies of the court. He 
fell in love with Dona Caterina de 
Alaide, a lady in waiting of the queen. 
Another suitor of the lady, fired with 
jealousy, persuaded her father to join 
with him, and together they procured 
Camoens’ banishment from court in 
1547. Three years later he joined the 
army of Africa. He proved himself a 
brave soldier, but in a naval engagement 
before Ceuta, he lost the sight of his 
right eye. Then he fell into careless and 
dissolute ways. In 1553 he was imprisoned 
for wounding an equerry of the king in 
a street fracas. Finally he was pardoned 
on condition that he would at once em¬ 
bark for India. Fortune served him no 
better in the East. He wrote a bitter 
satire on the government and on the life of 
the Portuguese in India, which increased 
the malice felt against him. He was 
banished from Goa, India, to the island of 
Macao. Here, in a sort of rocky gallery 
overlooking the sea, Camoens wrote his 
great epic poem. The place is called the 
Grotto of Camoens. After five years he 
was allowed to return to Goa. On the 
voyage thither the vessel was wrecked. 
The poet saved his life by swimming, and 
his poem by holding the manuscript out of 
the water with one hand while he swam 
with the other. In Goa he was thrown into 
prison again, on unjust charges. At length, 
after an absence of seventeen years filled 
with adventure and suffering, Camoens re¬ 
turned to his native country and to Lisbon. 
He found sad changes. His father was 
dead; his mother “very old and very 
poor”; the city’s population terribly re¬ 
duced by pestilence, and a young king on 
the throne. 

At last his epic, the Lusicid, “dreamed 
of at Coimbra, commenced in banishment, 
continued at Ceuta, resumed at Goa and 
Macao, and perfected in a humble little 
room at Lisbon, was issued from the press 


CAMOMILE—CAMORRA 


in 1572.” Its success was immense, but in 
equal proportion was the jealousy and mal¬ 
ice it aroused in other poets. The young 
king granted the author a pension of about 
twenty-five dollars, but he took with him 
on his expedition to Africa another poet 
than Camoens to sing his triumphs. 
The expedition was utterly disastrous, the 
king was slain, and Portugal’s independ¬ 
ence was lost. Camoens, who had borne 
his own troubles with fortitude, was over¬ 
whelmed by the troubles of his country. 
Henceforth he “went as one dreaming,” 
and in 1579 was taken ill of fever and 
died in a hospital. He was buried in 
the Church of Santa Ana, which was later 
destroyed by an earthquake. Of the in¬ 
scription on a marble slab erected to his 
memory in the church wall, the only words 
remembered are, “He lived poor and neg¬ 
lected, and so died.” 

Beside his epic, Camoens was the au¬ 
thor of many sonnets, ballads, elegiacs, and 
comedies. In most of them there is a 
strain of grief—a tragic note—born of the 
sufferings of a gifted man whose gifts 
were his own destruction. The great epic, 
Os Lusiadas, or The Lusiad (meaning The 
Portuguese), is in ten cantos. It has been 
translated into nearly every European 
language. A little over a century after its 
first appearance thirty-eight editions had 
been issued. The Lusiad is strictly a na¬ 
tional epic. The idea that Vasco da Gama 
is its hero is unquestionably a mistake. 
The nation is its hero; love of country 
its inspiration. The framework is slight. 
The poet selects the most brilliant episode 
in Portuguese history—the discovery of 
the passage to India. With wonderful skill 
he weaves into his narrative of the dis¬ 
covery every memorable expedition, every 
splendid achievement, every heroic deed, 
which the history or tradition of Portugal 
can furnish. According to the custom of 
the day, he supplies a fabulous element 
by-introducing the Olympian gods. Venus 
favors the Portuguese; Bacchus (Portu¬ 
gal was notable for its moderate use of 
wine) opposes them. Vasco da Gama, of 
course, leads the expedition, but his ex¬ 
ploits, like all else, are praiseworthy only 
in that they add to his country’s glory. 


The Lusiad is one of the noblest monuments 
ever raised to the national glory of any people. 
•—Botta. 

Camomile, kam-o-mil, or Chamomile, 

a plant closely allied to the yarrow and 
ox-eye daisy. An exceedingly bitter medi¬ 
cine is obtained by drying the daisy-like 
flowers and steeping them in twenty times 
their weight of water. Camomile is an 
old-fashioned emetic and a remedy for 
fever. It is cultivated as a field crop in 
parts of England. A showy relative of 
the medicinal camomile, the golden mar¬ 
guerite, is used by florists as a border plant. 
May weed, an ill-scented occupant of road¬ 
sides, is a humbler and less acceptable rela¬ 
tive. See Medicine. 

Camorra, an Italian secret society, after 
the order of the Mafia. It existed in the 
former kingdom of Naples, and at times 
spread terror among the inhabitants of 
northern Italy and Sicily. The Camor- 
riste, as its members are called, were ac¬ 
customed to appear in public on holidays 
and festive occasions and extort money 
from the citizens, who dared not refuse 
them. They passed contraband goods un¬ 
punished, committed numberless murders, 
and could be hired for any crime, yet were 
so closely and secretly banded together 
that the law seemed powerless. Even mem¬ 
bers of the society who were arrested and 
imprisoned practiced extortion upon jailers 
and fellow prisoners, so great was the fear 
inspired by the organization. 

Under Francis II an effort was made 
to put down the society and many Camor- 
riste were transported. Those who re¬ 
mained formed an alliance with the Gari¬ 
baldi committee and helped to expel the 
Bourbons. Under the new government the 
Camorra became a sort of political ma¬ 
chine, at times controlling the municipal 
government of Naples, including among 
its members almost the entire body of city 
employes. In 1879 the Italian government 
interfered and an investigation was insti¬ 
tuted. As a result of this investigation the 
Honest Government League was formed 
and the Camorriste who were candidates 
in the municipal elections of 1901 were de¬ 
feated. 

In still more recent years apprehension 


CAMPANIA—CAMPBELL 


has been felt in the United States and in 
Sicily on account of the increasing num¬ 
ber of violent crimes, committed, it is be¬ 
lieved, by members of the Mafia and the 
Camorra. From January to May, 1909, 
there were recorded in New York City, 
424 “Black Hand” cases and 44 bomb 
explosions. The word Black Hand, the 
name of a Spanish secret society, has come 
to be used to designate a crime of violence 
committed or supposed to be committed 
through the medium of a criminal organ¬ 
ization. It was estimated at that time that 
there were 30,000 members of the Camor¬ 
ra in the United States. Some investiga¬ 
tors of the subject, however, regard the 
whole matter as a sort of bugaboo. They 
claim that the Camorra exists nowhere 
except in the city of Naples, that the seem¬ 
ing organization in this country is but a 
banding together at various times and 
places of two or three criminals or evilly 
disposed persons. In support of this the¬ 
ory it is shown that the majority of the 
Italians in this country are law abiding and 
industrious, that there are practically no 
Italian tramps and no Italian drunkards, 
and that very few are in the various penal 
institutions of the country on serious 
charges. 

Campania, a region of ancient Italy. 
It lay on the coast of the Mediterranean 
between Latium and Lucania. It included 
Mount Vesuvius. Capua, Pompeii, and 
Herculaneum were Campanian cities. 
Modern Naples is the port and metropolis 
of the region. Campania was noted for 
agriculture and flocks. The Italians apply 
the name with slight modification to any 
plain about a city, as the Campagna of 
Rome, a fertile plain corresponding to 
ancient Latium in extent. 

Campanile, kam-pa-ne'la, the bell 
tower of Italian cities. It is usually a 
separate structure. The celebrated lean¬ 
ing tower of Pisa is a campanile. It is 
eight stories high, each surrounded by a 
row of columns. It leans thirteen feet out 
of the perpendicular. Other campaniles 
are those of Bologna, Padua, Cremona, 
Ravenna, and Florence. A fine Moorish 
bell tower erected at Seville, Spain, in 
1568, is 350 feet high. It is surmounted 


by a bronze vane that weighs a ton and 
a half, yet turns easily in the wind. The 
campanile of St. Mark’s, Venice, was 325 
feet high. The figure of an angel sixteen 
feet tall stood on its summit. It served 
as a watch tower whence the lookout 
sighted incoming ships. It was ascended 
by a winding inclined plane instead of 
steps. Galileo made many of his obser¬ 
vations from this tower. At one time a 
wooden cage hung half way up, in which 
prisoners were allowed to starve to death. 
In 1902 the tower fell with a crash. An¬ 
tiquarians had a rich find in the brick, 
some of which was declared to have been 
brought from Rome as early as the first 
century. 

In storied Venice, down whose rippling streets 
The stars go hurrying, and the white moon beats, 

Stood the great Bell Tower, fronting seas and 
skies— 

Fronting the ages, drawing all men’s eyes; 
Rooted like Teneriffe, aloft and proud, 

Taunting the lightning, tearing the flying cloud. 

It marked the hour for Venice; all men said 
Time cannot reach to bow that lofty head ; 

Time that shall touch all else with ruin, must 

Forbear to make this shaft confess its dust, 

Yet all the while, in secret, without sound, 

The fat worms gnawed the timbers underground. 

The twisting worm, whose epoch is an hour, 
Caverned its way into the mighty tower; 

And suddenly it shook, it swayed, it broke, 

And fell in darkening thunder at one stroke. 
The strong shaft, with an angel on the crown, 
Fell running; a thousand years went down! 

—Edwin Markham. 

Campanula. See Bellflower. 

Campbell System, The. See Dry 

Farming. 

Campbell, Thomas (1777-1844), a 
British poet and miscellaneous writer. He 
was born at Glasgow and was educated 
at Glasgow University. While a student 
he distinguished himself for translations 
of Greek poetry into English verse. At 
the age of twenty-two he published The 
Pleasures of Hope. This poem was 
“written in a garret, rewritten, rearranged, 
and polished to perfection.” It was an 
instantaneous success. Its author was at 
once offered employment by booksellers. 
That he was not at once successful finan¬ 
cially seems to have been due to his own 
procrastination and, possibly, his own in¬ 
dolence. In 1805 the British government 


CAMPHOR—CANADA 


settled a pension Of £200 or $1,000 a year 
on him. Campbell continued to write 
poetry and prose. He delivered lectures 
on poetry. He was for ten years editor 
of the New Monthly Magazine. He died 
in France, and his body was interred in 
Westminster Abbey. 

Gertrude of Wyoming was published in 
1809. As a poem it was thought by cer¬ 
tain critics to excel Pleasures of Hope. The 
scene is laid in Pennsylvania, and the 
poem relates a tragic story of the Revolu¬ 
tion. The descriptions of sylvan scenes and 
of domestic happiness are beautiful. It 
is lacking in dramatic qualities and is, on 
the whole, too sentimental. Campbell’s 
lyrics and the ballad, Lord Ullin’s Daugh¬ 
ter, are the best known of his poems. 

The names and range of his principal 
poems are sufficiently indicated by the fol¬ 
lowing quotations: 

’T is distance lends enchantment to the view, 

And robes the mountain in its azure hue. 

—Pleasures of Hope. 

’T is the sunset of life gives me mystical lore, 

And coming events cast their shadows before. 

— Lochiel’s Warning. 

And rustic life and poverty grow beautiful be¬ 
neath his touch. 

—Ode to the Memory of Burns. 

Ye mariners of England, 

That guard our native seas, 

Whose flag has braved a thousand years 
The battle and the breeze. 

—Ye Mariners of England. 

The combat deepens. On, ye brave. 

Who rush to glory or the grave. 

Few, few, shall part where many meet. 

The snows shall be their winding sheet, 

And every turf beneath their feet 
Shall be a soldier’s sepulchre. 

— Hohenlinden. 

Camphor, kam'fer, a whitish, semi¬ 
transparent, oily substance, obtained from 
the wood of the camphor tree. It has a pe¬ 
culiar, penetrating odor, and a tough, crys¬ 
talline structure. The world’s supply is 
obtained chiefly from Japan and Formosa. 
Chips obtained from the root, trunk, and 
branches of the laurel or camphor tree are 
heated in closed retorts and exposed to the 
action of hot steam. The camphor is tried 
out in the form of a vapor and crystallizes 
on the upper part of the retort. It is sent 
to market usually in a crude state, and re¬ 


fined elsewhere. Camphor Is known in sci¬ 
ence as a solid, essential oil. It floats on 
water. It may be dissolved in alcohol, 
but not readily in water. It burns with 
a white smoky flame. It is used in medi¬ 
cine, especially in cases of gout and rheu¬ 
matism. It is a valuable ingredient, also, 
in certain liniments. The odor of cam¬ 
phor is obnoxious to insects. Camphor 
balls are stored with furs and woolens to 
prevent the attacks of moths. They are 
useful in a cabinet of insects or bird skins. 
Camphor wood is used also to construct 
insect-proof chests in which to store cloth¬ 
ing. Formosa produces 6,000,000 pounds 
of camphor a year. Large groves have 
been discovered recently. The production 
is a government monopoly. The United 
States imports 2,000,000 pounds yearly, 
chiefly from Formosa and theJEast Indies. 
The world requires about 8,000,000 pounds 
yearly. 

Campus Martius, a famous level place 
in ancient Rome. It lay between the more 
northerly of the seven hills and the Tiber. 
It stretched along the river for a mile or 
so. It must have been at least half a mile 
in width. The name signifies “Plain of 
Mars”—military plain, we might trans¬ 
late it. It was used for military exercises 
and for popular assemblies. During the 
reign of Augustus public buildings, booths, 
circuses, theaters, and temples began to en¬ 
croach upon the campus; but there was 
still room for chariot races, horse races, 
ball games, and other athletic sports. It is 
now occupied by the chief part of modern 
Rome. See Rome. 

Canaan, ka'nan. See Palestine. 

Canada, Dominion of, the largest 
country in North America. It includes all 
of British North America, except New¬ 
foundland. The capital is Ottawa. The 
Dominion was established by act of Parlia¬ 
ment in 1867. The Dominion then com¬ 
prised only the provinces of Ontario, Que¬ 
bec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick; 
but provision was made in the act for the 
admission of British Columbia, Prince Ed¬ 
ward Island, the Northwest Territories, 
and Newfoundland. All these with the ex¬ 
ception of Newfoundland have since been 
admitted. The provinces now are Onta- 


CANADA 


rio, Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, 
Manitoba, Alberta, Saskatchewan, British 
Columbia, and Prince Edward Island; the 
northwestern districts are Keewatin, Yu¬ 
kon, Mackenzie, Ungava, and Franklin. 
The total area is 3,745,574 square miles, 
including lakes; greater than that of the 
United States with Alaska. The total pop¬ 
ulation at the last census was reported at 
7,081,869, not including Yukon Ter¬ 
ritory. Nearly one-half of the popu¬ 
lation is Roman Catholic of French an¬ 
cestry. Other denominations named in or¬ 
der of size are the Presbyterian, the 
Church of England, the Methodist, the 
Baptist, the Lutheran, and the Congrega- 
tionalist. 

The government is in the hands of a 
governor-general; a privy council of 14 
ministers; a Senate of 87 members appoint¬ 
ed by the governor-general and a House 
of 214 members elected by the various 
provinces according to their population. 
Each province has a local legislature. A 
lieutenant governor for each province is 
appointed by the governor-general of the 
Dominion. 

The largest twelve cities named in order 
of population are Montreal, Toronto, Win¬ 
nipeg, Quebec, Ottawa, Hamilton, Hali¬ 
fax, St. John, London, Vancouver, Vic¬ 
toria, and Kingston. Immigration into 
the western part of Canada, 1 chiefly from 
Great Britain and the United States, is 
large. The statistics given, therefore, 
must be revised frequently. 

Canada is well situated for commerce. 
Excellent ports on the Pacific coast are 
connected with those on the Great Lakes 
and those on the St. Lawrence by the 
Canadian Pacific, the Canadian Northern, 
and the Grand Trunk railways. Agricul¬ 
ture, lumber, fishing, and mining are the 
principal industries. The chief exports 
are fish, lumber, wheat, meat and dairy 
products, gold ore, and fur. The princi¬ 
pal imports are cotton, wool and silk 
goods, groceries, and hardware. Canada 
sells more goods to Great Britain than to 
any other country, and buys chiefly from 
the United States. By agreement with 
the mother country, Canada is permitted to 
levy a duty on all imports, one-third of 


which, however, is remitted on goods from 
any part of the British Empire. Sugar, 
spirits, and tobacco must pay full duty 
.wherever they come from. The various 
provinces, cities, rivers, etc., are reserved 
for special articles. 


Provinces 

Area, 

Square 

Miles 

Popula¬ 

tion 

1911 

Seats of 
Government 

Alberta. 

253,540 

372,919 

Edmonton 

British Columbia ... 

372,630 

362,768 

Victoria 

Manitoba. 

73,732 

454,691 

Winnipeg 

New Brunswick. 

27,985 

351,815 

Fredericton 

Nova Scotia. 

21,428 

461,847 

Halifax 

Ontario . 

260,862 

2,519,902 

Toronto 

Prince Edward Island 

2,184 

93,722 

Charlottetown 

Quebec. 

351,873 

2,000,697 

Quebec 

Saskatchewan. 

250,650 

453,508 

Regina 

Districts 

Mackenzie, Ungava, 
and Franklin. 

1,417,143 

18,875 

Regina 

Yukon . 

196,976 

27,219 

Dawson 

Keewatin. 

516,571 

Winnipeg 

Total. 

3,745,574 

7,071,883 



The income of the Dominion for the 
year ending Mar. 31, 1911, was $116,824,- 
000; debt, $470,633,000; exports, $297,- 
196,365; imports, $472,194,246. The re¬ 
markable growth of the northwestern prov¬ 
inces is told in separate articles. 

Statistics. The following statistics 
are the latest to be had from trustworthy 
sources: 


Land area, square miles. 3,619,818 

Population . 6,000,000 

Montreal . 466,197 

Toronto . 376,240 

Winnipeg . 135,430 

Quebec . 78,067 

Ottawa . 86,340 

Hamilton . 81,879 

Halifax ... .. 46,081 

St. John . 42,363 

London . 46,177 

Vancouver . 100,333 

Victoria . 31,620 

Kingston . 18,815 

No. provinces. ... 9 

Members of senate . 87 

Representatives . 214 

Salary of governor-general . $50,000 

Annual revenue . $90,000,000 

Bonded indebtedness, net . $263,000 

Acres under plow . 20,000,000 

Acres of forest .i.545,000,000 

Agricultural Products— 

Wheat, bushels . 168,386,000 

Oats, bushels. 354,919,000 

Barley, bushels ...; 56,975,000 

Rye, bushels . 1,708,000 

Buckwheat, bushels .. 7,794,000 

Flax, bushels . 2,131,000 





















































LAKES AMONG THE CLOUDS—Alberta 














THOUSAND ISLANDS. ST. LAWRENCE RIVER 
























CANADIAN LITERATURE—CANADIAN THISTLE 


Peas, bushels. 7,282,496 

Mixed grains, bushels . 19,649,329 

Beans, bushels . 1,284,236 

Corn, bushels . 23,592,811 

Potatoes, bushels. 68,796,893 

Turnips, bushels. 104,438,831 

Hay and clover, tons. 12,824,000 

Fodder corn, tons . 3,279,360 

Dairy products . $35,000,000 

Butter, pounds . 41,000,000 

Tobacco, acres . 6,000 

Wool clip, pounds . 11,000,000 

Domestic Animals— 

Horses . 1,800,000 

Cattle . 6,000,000 

Sheep . 2,700,000 

Swine . 3,000,000 

Fisheries, value . $25,000,000 

Grapes, acres . 12,785 

Exports .$297,196,360 

Miles of railway . 23,267 

Mineral Production. $87,000,000 

Asbestos, tons . 65,534 

Portland cement, barrels. 2,665,289 

Coal, tons . 10,904,466 

Copper, pounds. 64,361,636 

Corundum, tons . 1,039 

Gold, value. $9,559,274 

Gypsum, tons . 340,964 

Lead, pounds . 45,725,886 

Mica, value . $191,602 

Natural gas, value . $1,012,060 

Nickel, pounds . 19,143,111 

Petroleum, barrels . 527,987 

Pig iron (from Canadian ore), 

tons . 99,420 

Pyrites, tons . 47,336 

Salt, tons . 79,975 

Silver, value . $11,667,197 

Sewer pipes, value . $514,042 

Bank deposits .$654,000,000 

Teachers in public schools. 31,598 

Pupils enrolled . 1,146,321 

No. of postoffices . 11,377 

No. of immigrants (1910). 311,084 

Canadian Literature. See Litera¬ 
ture. 


Canadian National Park, a pleasure 
ground of the Canadian Northwest. It lies 
in the heart of the Rocky Mountains, on 
the border line between Alberta and British 
Columbia. It is one of the great parks of 
the world. The area is 5,732 square miles 
—3,668,480 acres. The present park was 
formed by the union of two parks, the 
Yoho and the Rocky Mountain Park. The 
Canadian Pacific traverses the park from 
east to west. Banff may be regarded as 
the railroad and hotel center. As the 
park is 70 miles in width and 100 miles in 
length, no one pretends to be familiar with 
all the gorges, glaciers, caverns, lakes, hot 


springs, and waterfalls. The park is full 
of game, but guns are forbidden. Bears, 
moose, elk, antelope, red deer, mountain 
sheep, goats, wolves, even coyotes, and 
many fur bearing animals abound. The 
rivers and lakes are full of the grayling, 
the mountain trout, the rainbow trout, and 
the salmon trout. Animals from every di¬ 
rection, seeming to know that they are safe 
within the park, resort thither for protec¬ 
tion. A herd of buffalo, the largest on the 
continent, is domesticated in one of the 
valleys. There is probably no other place 
where good hotels are so near to wilderness. 

Canadian Thistle, a well known and 
troublesome weed. It is an emigrant 
from Europe, where it is known as the 
field thistle. It is the most slender of all 
our thistles; the flowers are rose-purple; 
the heads are small and numerous. The 
root-stocks creep and interlace, and form 
extensive mats that defy the plow. The 
Canada thistle is a plague in old fields, 
pastures, and waysides. Nothing else can 
grow where a patch has taken possession, 
and it is the most difficult of all weeds to 
eradicate. Quack grass has more vitality 
and is harder to kill, but it lacks the sharp, 
prickly leaves. Quack grass affords valu¬ 
able pasturage, but the thistle is an un¬ 
mitigated nuisance, not to say, a torment, 
for stock avoid it like a plague. 

There seem to be three common sense 
ways of exterminating the pest,—cultivat¬ 
ing, smothering, and salting. The stalks . 
may be mowed, raked, and dried to clear 
the way for the team. The thistle sod may 
then be turned over. If disked early and 
late and between times through a dry sea¬ 
son, literally chopped to pieces and so fre¬ 
quently that no green blade peeps up, the 
thistles can be killed out. The chances 
are, however, that a rainy spell or a little 
neglect during a busy time, as haying or 
harvest, will enable the thistle to reset 
worse than ever. The whole secret lies 
in the principle that no ordinary plant, 
weed, or grain can live many seasons if pre¬ 
vented from forming leaves and thereby its 
growth is soon checked. 

The second method is dependent on a 
similar principle. No ordinary plant can 
live if kept in the dark. If a straw stack 













































CANAL 


or manure pile be left on a thistle patch 
for a sufficient length of time, the thistle 
will rot in the ground. A covering of 
tarred paper, weighted down so that the 
cracks will not blow open, will answer the 
purpose. Smothering is a practical plan 
for small patches. 

The third method is dependent on the 
principle that ordinary plants cannot live 
in alkaline soil. If enough salt or ashes 
be spread on the thistle mats to soak the 
soil with brine or lye the thistle will die, 
and that right speedily. Subsequent rains 
will leach the salt or lye out of the soil 
and distribute it so widely that the field 
will be none the worse, but rather the bet¬ 
ter for farming. 

Canal, an artificial waterway. Mill 
races, sluiceways, and irrigation canals are 
also designed to convey water. As generally 
used, however, the term canal is applied to 
waterways permitting the passage of boats 
and ships. Canals are of great antiquity. 
The Grand Canal of China is more than 
800 miles long. In the prosperous days 
of Babylonia, Mesopotamia was intersected 
by waterways. Lower Egypt was well 
provided with canals. The Romans con¬ 
structed canals from the lower Rhone to 
the Mediterranean, and from the Tiber to 
the sea. The plains of Lombardy were 
connected with the Adriatic Sea. A canal 
from the Bay of Biscay to the Mediterra¬ 
nean was completed in 1681. It is 148 
miles long. It saves a far-about voyage 
of 2,000 miles through the Straits of 
Gibraltar. Holland, Belgium, portions of 
France, England and northern Germany 
are covered by networks of artificial water¬ 
ways. A system of canals connects St. 
Petersburg with the Caspian Sea. A canal 
108 miles long, by way of the Main, con¬ 
nects the Danube and the Rhine. 

The first boat canal in the United States 
was built in 1793 around the Falls of the 
Connecticut River at South Hadley. 
There are now about forty inland canals 
in the United States with an aggregate 
length of over 2,470 miles. They have 
cost $200,000,000. They lie chiefly in New 
York, Virginia, and intermediate territory. 
One of importance, 196 miles in length, 
runs from Chicago to La Salle at the head 


of navigation on the Illinois River. The 
Ohio Falls Canal is constructed around 
the rapids of the Ohio River at Louisville. 
It is only 11,000 feet long, but is of great 
importance to navigation. The most cele¬ 
brated canal in the United States is the 
Erie, connecting Buffalo on Lake Erie with 
the Hudson River at Albany, a distance of 
352 miles. It was opened in 1825. Its 
first cost was $7,602,000. The cost of 
freighting was reduced, however, from 
$100 a ton to $3. 

Canada has built three important canals 
for the improvement of the St. Lawrence 
and Great Lakes waterway. The Sault 
Ste. Marie Canal permits passage through 
the rapids between Lakes Superior and Hu¬ 
ron; the Welland Canal enables ships to 
pass the Falls of Niagara; a third passes 
around the Lachine Rapids in the St. Law¬ 
rence River. 

Of ship canals the Suez Canal is the 
most celebrated. It unites the waters of 
the Mediterranean with the Red Sea. 
The Caledonian Canal connects the Firth 
of Forth and Loch Eil. The Manchester 
Canal connects that city with Liverpool. 
The Kaiser Wilhelm Canal connects the 
North Sea with the Baltic. 

While digging a ditch through the 
ground seems very simple, the construc¬ 
tion of a canal is really an engineering 
work of great difficulty. It requires to be 
carried over waterways on aqueducts. The 
Erie Canal crosses the Mohawk River on 
arches twice. The Suez Canal is level 
from end to end. In case, however, that 
a canal of this sort would require too deep 
a ditch in the middle of its course, it must 
be constructed in sections at different 
levels, connected by locks. In its simplest 
form a lock is a water-tight passageway, 
or a basin fitted with doors at the upper 
and lower ends. When a boat desires to 
descend into a lower part of the canal, 
it enters the basin and the upper doors 
are closed behind it. The water is then 
allowed to run out of the basin until the 
boat has dropped to the level of the sec¬ 
tion below. The lower doors are then 
opened and the boat passes on its way. 
In case it is desired to raise the boat 
to a higher level, it enters the basin 


CANALS 


from below, the doors are closed behind 
it, and water is admitted from above un¬ 
til the basin fills, raising the boat to the 
level of the upper section. The upper 
doors are then opened and the boat pro¬ 
ceeds on its way. Sometimes a number of 
locks are built at the same place. In this 
way a boat is enabled to climb a hill—one 
step at a time. 

Sometimes canal boats are pulled up an 
inclined plane by steam power. What are 


known as tank elevators are used in the 
canals between Belgium and Paris. Peter¬ 
borough, Canada, has one of the largest 
canal locks of this sort in the world. It 
consists of two water-tight steel boxes, each 
holding 1,300 tons of water. These as¬ 
cend and descend by hydraulic power, be¬ 
tween three great guide towers, 100 feet 
high, built of solid masonry. When one 
box is up, the other is always down. A boat 
enters a box; the gates close; a little addi- 


Amencan Canals. 

Showing the cost, date of construction, length, and navigable depth of the principal commercial 

canals of the United States and Canada. 


Name. 

Albemarle and Chesapeake (Va. and N. C.).... 

Augusta (Ga.) . 

Black River (N. Y.). 

Cayuga and Seneca (N. Y.). 

Champlain (N. Y.). 

Chesapeake and Delaware (Md. and Del.). 

Chesapeake and Ohio (Md. and D. C.). 

Companys (La.) .;. 

Delaware and Raritan (N. J.). 

Delaware Division (Pa.) . 

Des Moines Rapids (Iowa). . 

Dismal Swamps (Va. and N. C.). 

Erie (N. Y.). 

Galveston and Brazos (Tex.)... 

Hocking (Ohio) . 

Illinois and Michigan (Ill.). 

Illinois and Mississippi (Ill.). 

Lehigh Coal and Navigation Co. (Pa.). 

Louisville and Portland (Ky.). 

Miami and Erie (Ohio). 

Morris (Pa. and N. J.). 

Mussel Shoals and Elk R. Shoals (Tenn.). 

Ogeechee (Ga.) . 

Ohio (Ohio) .. 

Oswego (N. Y.) . 

Pennsylvania (Pa.) . 

Portage Lake and Lake Superior (Mich.). 

Santa Fe (Fla.) . 

Sault Ste. Marie (ship canal). 

Schuylkill Navigation Co. (Pa.). 

Sturgeon Bay and Lake Michigan (Wis.). 

St. Mary’s Falls (Mich.). 

Susquehanna and Tidewater (Pa. and Md.).... 

Walhonding (Ohio) . 

Welland (ship canal) (Ont.). 

Foreign 

Name. 

Suez, Mediterranean and Red Seas. 

Cronstadt, St. Petersburg . 

Corinth, Corinth and Angina Gulfs... 

Manchester Ship, Manchester and Liverpool.... 

Kaiser Wilhelm, Baltic and North Seas. 

Elbe and Trove . 

Amsterdam . 

Panama canal (1915) . 


Cost of 


When Length 

Depth 

construction 

completed 

miles 

feet 

$1,641,363 


1860 


41 

7/2 

1,500,000 


1847 


9 

11 

3,581,954 


1849 


35 

4 

2,232,632 


1832 


25 

7 

4,044,000 


1822 


81 

6 

3,730,230 


1829 


14 

9 

11,230,327 


1850 


181 

6 

90,000 


1847 


22 

6 

4,888,749 


1818 


66 

7 

2,433,350 


1830 


60 

6 

4,582,009 


1877 


714 

5 

2,800,000 


1822 


22 

6 

52,540,800 


1826 


387 

7 

340,000 


1851 


38 

3/ 

975,481 


1843 


42 

4 

7,357,787 


1848 


102 

6 

7,350,000 


1895 


75 

7 

4,455,000 


1821 


108 

6 

5,578,631 


1872 


2V 2 

. . 

8,062,680 


1835 


274 

5/ 

6,000,000 


1836 


103 

5 

3,156,919 


1889 


16 

6 

407,810 


1840 


3 

3 

4,695,201 


1835 


317 

4 

5,239,526 


1828 


38 

7 

7,731,750 


1839 

1 

193 

6 

529,892 


1873 


25 

15 

70,000 


1880 


10 

5 

4,000,000 


1895 


3 

18 

12,461,600 


1826 


108 

6 54 

99,661 


1881 


1/ 

15 

7,909,667 


1S96 


154 

21 

4,931,345 


1840 


45 

5/ 

607,269 

V 

1843 


25 

4 

23,736,353 


1900 


26/ 

14 

Canals. 






Length 

Depth 

Bottom width 


miles 

feet 


feet 


Cost 

90 

31 


108 

$100,000,000 

16 

20 / 

220 


10,000,000 

4 

2654 

72 


10,000,000 

35/ 

26 


120 


75,000,000 

61 

29 / 

72 


40,000,000 

41 

10 


72 


6,000,000 

13/ 

23 


88 



50 

45 


300 


325,000,000 










































CANARD—CANCER 


tional water is introduced into the other 
box, and the boat rises swiftly and steadily 
to the higher level. The operation is 
almost automatic, three minutes being re¬ 
quired to make the lift. The entire lock^ 
age is accomplished in twelve minutes. 
This lock was completed in 1903 at a cost 
of $500,000. 

The Erie Canal has seventy-two locks. 
Fifty-seven of them are double. Boats are 
lifted at West Troy 188)4 feet, and at 
Lockport 54)4 feet. The total difference 
in the level of the highest and the lowest 
section of the canal is 568 feet. The 
locks of the Morris Canal in New Jersey 
lift boats 1,084 feet. Canals require to be 
wide enough so that boats going in op¬ 
posite directions may pass each other. In 
ship canals the ship is usually towed by a 
tug. By far the greatest achievement in canal 
construction is the Panama Canal. This is 
treated fully in another article. Among 
the recent canal projects are the New York 
Barge Canal, the Cape Cod Canal, and the 
New Welland Canal. Among related pro¬ 
jects of interest are the Keokuk dam and 
lock and the high dam at Minneapolis. 

See Erie Canal; Suez Canal; Pana¬ 
ma Canal ; Corinth ; Sault Ste. 
Marie; Paris; Lock; Nova Scotia. 

Canard, ka-nard', the French name 
for duck. In conversation it is applied 
to any improbable story, much in the same 
way as we apply the term fishy, or fish 
story. A story was once current in Paris 
to the effect that a flock of starving ducks 
ate one of their number every day until 
but one duck remained. It has been sug¬ 
gested that the term, canard, grew out of 
this improbable anecdote. 

Canary, a beautiful little finch, inter¬ 
mediate between the goldfinch and the 
linnet. It is found wild in Madeira, the 
Canary, and Cape Verde Islands, where 
it comes around houses, building nests of 
moss and feathers. It is a celebrated 
songster. Its plumage is green, or green¬ 
ish-yellow in its native home, but, like 
other domesticated animals, it has devel¬ 
oped into a number of varieties. Eggs, 
pale blue, four or five in number. The 
female sits thirteen days. Several broods 
are raised every year. The wild bird is 


about five inches long. The canary in¬ 
dustry is an important one, particularly 
in the Harz Mountains, where unusually 
fine birds noted for extraordinary powers 
of song fetch as high as seventy-five dol¬ 
lars apiece. Hemp seed, canary seed, 
which is the seed of a grass abundant in 
the Canaries, millet, poppy seed, bits of 
green lettuce, and sugar form the best 
diet for this favorite cage bird. Lime is 
supplied by a cuttlefish bone. Healthy 
birds live about fifteen years. See Bird; 
Goldfinch. 

Canary Islands, a cluster of thirteen 
volcanic islands lying. 150 miles off the 
western coast of Africa. They form a 
province of Spain. The inhabitants are 
chiefly of Spanish blood. Population in 
1900 was 358,564; area, about 2,808 
square miles. The peak of Teneriffe rises 
to a height of 12,182 feet. It is a wel¬ 
come landmark to the sailor. The plants 
are in part those of the Mediterranean re¬ 
gion, including the oak, chestnut, pine, 
cedar, etc., with a few, as the Euphorbia, 
from Africa. There are 420 species of 
flowering plants not found elsewhere. 
The canary bird, the red partridge, and 
several kinds of lizards abound, but there 
are no snakes. As in Italy and southern 
France, the goat is an important domestic 
animal; but there are several thousand 
cattle in the islands. Where not too stony 
the soil is productive, meriting the old 
name of “Fortunate Islands.” A number 
of fine hotels, together with the attract¬ 
iveness of the climate, have made the 
Canaries a favorite winter resort. The 
exports are chiefly bananas, tomatoes, pota¬ 
toes, onions, cochineal, sugar, wine, and 
almonds. Orchards of oranges, lemons, 
and figs yield abundantly. The women 
folk are noted for linen drawn-work. See 
Spain. 

Cancer, a malignant disease somewhat 
resembling a carbuncle in appearance. 
The name is Latin, meaning crab’s claw, 
from the fact that the roots of a cancer, ex¬ 
tending in different directions, have some¬ 
what the appearance of a crab’s claw. Sev¬ 
eral kinds of cancer are characterized as 
hard, soft, black, etc. It is a malady that 
baffles the skill of the physician. The 



CANDLE—CANNIBAL 


only sure cure is removal by the surgeon’s 
knife before the roots have penetrated the 
tissues too far to be reached, for no part 
of the body, bone or muscle, is proof. 
Caustic is not infrequently employed to 
burn out a cancer. Of late hope has been 
aroused that all but the most grievous 
cancers may be killed by the use of X- 
rays and certain light rays of an ultra 
nature. Cancer kills about 30,000 Amer¬ 
icans a year. In the whole United States, 
it ranks seventh in the number of its vic¬ 
tims. See Finsen. 

Candle, a cylindrical piece of wax, 
paraffin, or tallow, with a wick running 
lengthwise through its center. It is de¬ 
signed to give light in burning. In burn¬ 
ing the flame melts the fat; the wick ab¬ 
sorbs the melted fat and feeds it into the 
flame. The wick and the fat require to be 
well proportioned to give the best results. 
If the wick be too small the light will 
be dim and the flame too small to melt 
the fat fast enough. If the wick be too 
large for the candle the supply of fat 
will be insufficient to maintain a bright 
flame. The wick is usually of soft, twisted 
cotton string. In early England rushes 
were used for the wicks of rush lights. Sci¬ 
entists have tried, without marked commer¬ 
cial success, to invent a wick that would 
not need snuffing. 

Tallow makes excellent candles. The 
wax known as spermaceti is from the 
sperm whale, and is the best material. 
Excellent wax for candles is made from 
palm oil. Paraffin is used most commonly 
in England. Dip candles are made by 
lowering the wicks into melted tallow or 
wax repeatedly, allowing each coating to 
cool and harden before dipping again. 
Molded candles are made by pouring melt¬ 
ed tallow into cylindrical molds of pewter 
or tin through the center of which wicki 
have been drawn. The lower end of the 
mold is closed by a conical cap, in the 
center of which a hole is left for the 
wick. The wick is passed through this 
hole and knotted. The other end is held 
in place by fastening it to a cross stick. 
The heated tallow is poured into the 
mold surrounding the wick and is allowed 
to harden. The knot is cut at the lower 


end of the mold, the mold is warmed 
slightly, and the candle withdrawn. The 
candle is made up end down, with the 
top or conical end in the lower end of the 
mold. Usually a number of candles are 
molded at the same time. Wax is too 
sticky and contracts too much in cooling 
to be run in molds. The wax candles are 
made by dipping and then rolling to and 
fro on a flat table to give a smooth, even 
surface. Large wax candles, such as are 
burned on altars, are made usually by 
wrapping a sheet of wax around a wick 
and then rolling. 

In burning, the melted fat is converted 
first into a gas, which forms a dark, cool 
spot around the wick. The light pro¬ 
duced by a sperm candle seven-eighths of 
an inch in diameter, and burning 120 
grains an hour, is taken as a measure of 
light giving. It is called a standard can¬ 
dle. A ten-candle electric lamp is one 
that gives as much light as ten of these 
candles. 

The Chemistry of a Candle by Tyn¬ 
dall is an interesting book. 

Candy. See Confectionery. 

Canebrake, a thicket of cane. Bundles 
of the American cane are shipped over the 
country as “bamboo” fishing poles. Cane 
grows in almost impenetrable thickets in 
the bottom lands of Kentucky and south¬ 
ward. Many authorities call cane a bam¬ 
boo. At all events it is closely related to 
the larger plant so much used by the na¬ 
tives of southeast Asia. Cane grows from 
ten to forty feet high with a thickness at 
the butt of one-half to three inches. Cane 
is, of course, only a large reed. It be¬ 
longs, with sugar-cane and broom corn, 
to the grass family. See Bamboo. 

Cannibal, a person who eats human 
flesh. The word is a corruption of the 
word caribal, from Carib, a native of the 
Caribbean region. Allusions to cannibals 
occur in the most ancient writings. Many 
savage people consider human sacrifices 
or feasts of human flesh the most accept¬ 
able offering to their gods. The ancient 
Aztecs and the people of Borneo and of 
the Fiji Islands indulged in frightful or¬ 
gies of this kind. The North American 
Indian believed that devouring the heart 



—CANNON 


CANNING 

of a brave enemy gave him courage in 
battle. Downright eating of human flesh 
for ordinary food is not believed to have 
been widespread at any time, yet the na¬ 
tives of Malaysia, New Guinea, the South 
Sea Islands, and parts of western and cen¬ 
tral Africa were certainly addicted to 
this habit. A traveler among the Indians 
of Tierra del Fuego states that in times 
of scarcity they ate their own people, even 
in preference to their dogs, the latter be¬ 
ing useful in taking game. It is believed 
that cannibalism is not practiced at the 
present time, except in very limited, out- 
of-the-way regions. 

Canning, a process of preserving per¬ 
ishable articles of food by excluding 
agents of decay. The article to be pre¬ 
served is first heated to sterilize or kill 
bacterial germs, and is sealed up in steril¬ 
ized, air-tight glass or metal jars to keep 
bacteria out. If bacteria within be killed 
and bacteria without be kept out,—that 
is, if sterilization and sealing are success¬ 
ful, canned goods keep fresh indefinitely. 
The process was invented, or rather dis¬ 
covered, in France about the beginning of 
the nineteenth century, so that no tests of 
ancient canning are possible; but canned 
goods sealed up over eighty years ago are 
still palatable. 

Housewives not infrequently seal earth¬ 
en jars with sheets of writing paper, ren¬ 
dered airtight by a sizing of the white 
of an egg; but glass jars with metal 
covers are more convenient and are safer. 
The jars are usually surrounded by boil¬ 
ing water and filled with boiling hot 
fruit, the covers are screwed on tight, and 
the process is complete. If all be done 
with care and neatness, the jars may be set 
away for years and not ferment. 

The process in large canning establish¬ 
ments is essentially the same. Tin cans 
are set in hot water, and are filled with 
boiling hot fruit, vegetables, or fish. The 
orifice is covered with a piece of tin, which 
is sealed in place with a soldering iron. 
An awl hole is left open; the contents of 
the can are brought to a boil. The hole 
is then sealed with a drop of solder. If 
bacteria are excluded successfully, the 
goods cannot spoil. 


The canning industry in America ap¬ 
pears to have begun in New York City 
about 1818 with lobster and salmon; but 
it has been extended to include all kinds 
of meats, fowl and fish, vegetables, soups, 
milk, fruits, not to name a large number 
of pickles and relishes. Canned goods 
grew in favor slowly until about 1850, 
when the rush to the gold fields of Cali¬ 
fornia, followed by the Civil War and the 
opening of the Great Plains and Rocky 
Mountain regions, created a tremendous 
demand for all sorts of canned food. 

“Thirty years ago,” says the California 
Fruit Grower, “canned goods were a lux¬ 
ury, relatively expensive, and used only 
in emergencies, on shipboard, or at re¬ 
mote places where other food was unob¬ 
tainable. Today their use is universal 
among the poor as well as the rich. It 
would be difficult to find a home, hospital, 
club, hotel, steamer, or buffet car without 
its assortment of them.” 

The last United States census gives the 
value of pickles, fruit, and vegetables put 
up in cans at $157,101,000. The annual 
number of cans, almost incredible until 
the reader pauses to recall how omnipres¬ 
ent canned goods are in every grocery, is 
given by the same authority as: peas, two- 
pound cans, 141,640,872; corn, two-pound 
cans, 178,830,360; tomatoes, three-pound 
cans, 309,839,664; and other vegetables, 
as string beans, pumpkins, beets, squash, as¬ 
paragus, etc., in great quantities. 

Canning is carried on in every province, 
state and territory of North America, but 
shows a tendency to centralize. Califor¬ 
nia leads easily in fruit. The state put up 
canned fruit worth $32,915,000. Mary¬ 
land cans a good fourth of the tomatoes 
and peas. New York still leads in canned 
corn, but Illinois and Iowa are in close 
pursuit. 

See Salmon ; Bacterium. 

Cannon, large guns for hurling pro¬ 
jectiles by means of explosives. Cannon 
were used by Edward III against the 
Scots in 1327 ; by the French against the 
Flemish in 1338; and by the English at 
the battle of Crecy and at the siege of Ca¬ 
lais in 1346. The first cannon were built 
like a keg, of iron bars surrounded by 







Armored automobile with rapid-fire gun. 



Balloon gun. 




Ivrupp disappearing gun. 



Protected rapid-fire gun. 


meia gun ana ammunition wagon 




TYPES OF CANNON. 


11-3 














































CANNON—CANOVA 


hoops and iron rings. The first cannon 
balls were made of stone. Later a method 
of casting hollow canon was invented. In 
1749 the French hit upon a method of 
casting cannon solid, and of boring them 
out afterward. Celebrated guns of Amer¬ 
ican patterns are the Parrott, the Dahl- 
gren, the Rodman, and the Gatling. 
Modern cannon can throw their projectiles 
farther than the report can be heard. 

Cannon, Joseph G. (1836-), an 
American statesman. He was born of 
Quaker parentage, at Guilford, North 
Carolina. The family removed to Illinois, 
where the young man worked in a grocery 
store and studied law until admitted to the 
bar. He was state’s attorney of Vermilion 
County, 1861-68, and in 1873 was elect¬ 
ed to Congress by the Republican party, 
and served continuously till 1891 when 
he went down to defeat in the general 
Cleveland landslide. In 1893 he was 
again returned to Congress and has been 
re-elected at each recurring campaign 
since that time. From 1903 to 1911 he 
served as speaker of the House, ruling that 
body with an iron hand. He gradually 
lost his following among the representatives 
as the so-called insurgent movement 
among the Republicans gained ground. He 
was unswervingly allied with the “stand- 
pat” element in the party, which cost him 
the confidence of the country at large. Just 
at the close of the session in the spring of 
1911, his opponents had gained sufficient 
strength to appeal successfully from his 
decision in one of the most dramatic in¬ 
cidents ever witnessed in the House. 
Though continuing as a member of the 
next Congress he was succeeded in the 
speakership by Champ Clark, a Democrat. 

Canon Law, a term applied to the rules 
or canons laid down by a church or a relig¬ 
ious order for the guidance of its followers. 
The most important example is the code of 
the Roman Catholic Church. It had its 
origin in Scriptural teachings and has been 
determined by the pope or by councils of 
the Church under his direction, some twen¬ 
ty in number, beginning with the Council 
of Nicaea in 325. With its many additions 
and revisions it has become an extensive 
code. 


Canoe. See Boat. 

Canossa, a mountain castle of the 
Apennine region, one-third of the way 
from Bologna to Genoa. It is about 
twelve miles southwest of the railroad sta¬ 
tion of Reggio. In 1077 it was the tem¬ 
porary residence of Pope Gregory VII. 
He required Emperor Henry IV of Ger¬ 
many with whom he had a serious quarrel 
to come to Canossa for absolution. Hen¬ 
ry, it is said, made supplication at the 
gate for three days, bareheaded and bare¬ 
footed, before the pope consented even 
to see him. To go to Canossa is, there¬ 
fore, a proverbial expression for abject 
surrender, humiliation. 

See Gregory VII. 

Canova (1757-1822), a celebrated 
Venetian sculptor. He is one of the most 
noted artists of modern times. His fa¬ 
vorite material was Carrara marble. His 
subjects were both classical and modern. 
A list of fifty titles would be required to 
do justice to his work. Some of the clas¬ 
sical subjects selected for his mallet and 
chisel were Theseus, Cupid, Psyche, Her¬ 
cules, Venus, Hector, Ajax, and Apollo. 
He executed several effigies, or tombs, of 
wondrous white marble, having great 
skill in making cold marble lie in soft, 
fleecy folds, as the drapery of a recumbent 
figure. A statue of the king of Naples, 
a bust of Napoleon, and a colossal statue 
of our own Washington in a sitting at¬ 
titude are some of his more modern 
achievements. In 1816 Canova induced 
the French to restore the art treasures of 
Rome, which had been carried off by 
Napoleon. His name was enrolled by the 
pope in the Golden Book as one who 
“deserved well of the city of Rome.” 

Canovas del Castillo, Antonio ( 1828 - 
1897), a Spanish statesman and man of let¬ 
ters. He was born and grew up at Malaga. 
At an early age he entered the field of 
journalism and allied himself with the 
Liberal Party by whom he was elected to 
the Cortes in 1854. His rise into prom¬ 
inence was rapid, and he became a leader 
in the movement which placed Alfonso XII 
on the throne. He was several times prime 
minister; and was again serving in that 
capacity, when he was killed by an anarchist. 


CANTABRI—CANTALOUPE 


Cantabri, the rudest and perhaps the 
most valiant of the inhabitants of ancient 
Spain. These bold mountaineers dwelt in 
what was then known as Cantabria, the 
northwest part of the Iberian penninsula 
near the Bay of Biscay. The general name 
Cantabrian Mountains is still used for the 
various ranges extending along the north 
of Spain west of the Pyrenees. They are 
known chiefly for their brave opposition to 
the Roman arms in the Cantabrian War of 
25-19 B. C. The Emperor Augustus in his 
efforts to extend the Roman arms to the 
limits of Europe on the west, sent Tiberius 
across the Pyrenees into Spain. In various 
campaigns extending over six years this 
was accomplished, but with heavy losses. 
The Cantabri who retired to their 
mountain fastnesses were never fully sub¬ 
jugated. 

Cantaloupe, a variety of muskmelon, 
known also as rockmelon. The melon is 
from Asia; the name is from Italy. The 
melon was brought from Armenia, it is 
believed, to the papal gardens at Canta- 
luppi, near Rome. As distinguished from 
the nutmeg varieties, a cantaloupe is any 
furrowed muskmelon having a hard, warty 
rind. The flesh may be white, green, or 
yellow. 

A small, hard, rough cantaloupe, with 
green, fibrous flesh of rich, sweet flavor, 
has been developed by the growers of 
Rocky Ford, the county seat of Otero 
County, in southeastern Colorado. Gar¬ 
deners call this variety the Netted Gem, 
but it is known the United States over as 
the Rocky Ford cantaloupe. The Colo¬ 
rado melon district is a belt of rich, ir¬ 
rigated land in the valley of the Arkansas. 
The business began in the eighties with 
small shipments to the Denver market. 
The peculiar adaptation of the soil to the 
raising of the melon and its acceptability 
in the market have encouraged growers, 
until the cantaloupe crop is the chief de¬ 
pendence of a large section of which 
Rocky Ford is the chief station. 

Cantaloupe raising has had quite a his¬ 
tory. It is easy enough to raise canta¬ 
loupes. With rich soil, sunny skies, and 
irrigation, one summer is like another; the 
grower is independent of season. The 
loss or profit lies in the manner of market¬ 


ing. At first, shipments were made by 
individual growers by express. The rates 
ate up the profits. Too many melons were 
dumped on the market at a time. Owing 
to rumors of high prices, one city might 
have an over supply, while another had 
none. The growers learned to cooperate 
in 1896. A group of farmers arranged 
to combine their melons and ship by 
freight in car lots to Kansas City and St. 
Louis. The first cars sold to advantage.' 
Later shipments were sold at a loss. 

> The next season an association of prac¬ 
tically all the growers in Otero County 
was organized. One hundred and twenty 
cars were sent to the St. Louis market. 
This year established the fame of Rocky 
Ford and brought the grower profit. In 
1898 disaster came. Large plantings 
were made. Eight hundred growers as¬ 
sociated. Arrangements were made to ship 
under contract to a single St. Louis firm 
which had established agencies in New 
York, Pittsburg, and other Eastern cities. 
Five thousand acres of melons were ready 
for daily picking. Rocky Ford was a 
busy station. As high as twenty-eight 
cars were sent off daily. The markets 
were glutted. Melons spoiled in transit. 
A hundred cars were thrown into New 
York harbor. The Santa Fe railroad can¬ 
celled freight charges on spoiled car lots, 
but the commission house was able to pay 
the growers’ association less than a third 
of the contract price. 

It is difficult to get farmers to hold to¬ 
gether even under favorable circum¬ 
stances. The disaster wrecked the large 
association, and many growers turned 
their attention to sugar beets. The no¬ 
tion of cooperation survived, however. 
Many smaller associations were formed 
with a central steering committee. Stan¬ 
dard Rocky Fords are now shipped in 
crates holding forty-five melons. The 
“ventilator” car of early shipments has 
been replaced by large refrigerator cars 
in which some 366 crates can be sent to 
any corner of the Union. Melons arrive in 
as firm and sound condition as when they 
started. The distribution was controlled 
(1909) almost entirely by four commission 
houses in Pittsburg and New York. The 
year named was a year of over production. 


CANTATA—CANTON 


Rocky Fords sold at retail at Mississippi 
Valley points as low as seventy-five cents 
a crate. 

Cantata, kan-ta'ta, originally a musical 
composition for one voice including both 
melody and recitative. The term has come 
to be applied to a class of musical com¬ 
positions comparable with oratorios and 
operas, but shorter and less pretentious 
than either. The cantata is arranged for 
several, sometimes for many voices. It in¬ 
cludes solos, choruses and interludes. The 
oratorio is dignified, its theme is sacred, 
moreover it is purely musical. The can¬ 
tata may have a sacred theme or it may be 
light in character. If the theme be sacred 
it is of a simple nature, less symbolic 
than that of the oratorio. The cantata 
may combine music and drama. It then 
resembles the opera, but is presented, usu¬ 
ally, without scenic accessories. See Or¬ 
atorio; Opera. 

Canteen, Army. Literally a canteen is 
a soldier’s drinking cup. The name is ap¬ 
plied commonly to a shopi in garrisons and 
barracks where a soldier may purchase re¬ 
freshments of various sorts. In the Ameri¬ 
can army the canteen or post-exchange has 
for many years derived its profits from the 
sale of beer and light wines. In 1901 
Congress passed a law prohibiting the sale 
of intoxicating liquors in any canteen, post¬ 
exchange or army transport. The canteens 
were soon closed, presumably because there 
was no profit in running them without 
liquor. Since soldiers were thus deprived 
of the ability to gratify individual tastes 
and desires for comforts and amusements 
without going outside the limits of the 
camp, Congress, in 1902 and in 1903 voted 
$500,000 to be used in the support of army 
canteens. 

Canterbury, a cathedral city of east 
Kent. It was the capital of the ancient 
kingdom of Kent. It lies fifty-six miles 
from London on the highroad from that 
city to Dover. It was the original seat 
of Christianity in Great Britain. It is 
situated in a fertile valley among green 
hills, and presents a picturesque appear¬ 
ance from whichever side it is viewed. 
There is a considerable local industry in 
brewing. The present population is about 


25,000. There are local manufactures of 
beer, leather, brick, lime, and ropes, as 
well as a local trade in grain and hops. 
The chief feature of the town, however, 
is a magnificent Gothic cathedral. The 
original buildings have all been destroyed. 
The present edifice has been built at sev¬ 
eral different times. It is not uniform in 
style, but is very impressive. It is 530 
feet in length and 154 feet in breadth. 
The main tower, 235 feet in height, is one 
of the finest in England. The material 
is a yellow stone from Caen, France. The 
Archbishop of Canterbury is the primate 
of the Church of England. He places 
the crowns on the heads of the king and 
queen at their coronation, and, wherever 
they may be, he regards them as his pa¬ 
rishioners. Canterbury formerly contained 
the shrine of Thomas a Becket, to which 
pilgrimages were customary in the days 
of Chaucer. Although Becket’s shrine 
was demolished in 1538 by Henry VIII, 
a number of interesting monuments are 
still to be seen. See Lambeth Palace; 
Chaucer; Becket; Anglo-Saxon. 

Canterbury Tales, The, a collection 
of stories by Chaucer, first printed in 
1475. The work consists of twenty-two 
poems and two prose tales, told by a com¬ 
pany of pilgrims on their way to Canter¬ 
bury. See Chaucer. 

Canton, a large city in China. The 
population of the city with its suburbs is 
estimated at 1,600,000. It is inclosed by 
'brick walls twenty-five feet high and twenty 
feet thick, having a circuit of over six 
miles. There are a dozen gates. All 
close at night-fall, oriental fashion. The 
streets are straight, clean, and narrow. 
Goods are carried on bamboo frames, a 
man walking at each end. Common 
people walk; the aristocracy are carried 
in sedan chairs. There are many impos¬ 
ing temples, among others two lofty pago¬ 
das. The prevailing religion is Buddhism. 
The city is situated on the Pearl River 
about eighty miles from the sea. Wharves 
extend for several miles. A very great 
number of houseboats, as many as 20,000 
or 30,000, crowd the river. It is thought 
that 200,000 people have no other home. 
Families live for generations in these 



CANTON—CAPE COD 


floating dwellings. They catch a few fish, 
but make their living chiefly by convey¬ 
ing merchandise. Canton merchants are 
shrewd business men, noted for their hon¬ 
esty. The foreign business, chiefly with the 
United States and Great Britain, amounts 
to about $40,000,000 a year. European 
ships began to visit Canton by way of the 
Cape of Good Hope in 1517. See China. 

Canton, a city of Ohio, county seat of 
Stark County. It is in the midst of a 
rich agricultural region, and deposits of 
coal, limestone, and pottery clay are near 
by, but the city’s chief interests are in 
the line of manufactures. Among manu¬ 
factured products are watches and watch 
cases, dental chairs, stoves, farming im¬ 
plements, metal ceilings, metal office fur¬ 
nishings, machinery, and iron bridges. 
There are also rolling mills and steel 
works. The city has paved streets, electric 
lights and street railways, is served by 
several railroads and has two parks and 
a beautiful lake resort. There are schools, 
churches, newspapers, banks, hospitals,— 
all the requisites for a flourishing modern 
city. In 1907 a national monument was 
erected here in honor of President Mc¬ 
Kinley, whose home for many years was 
at Canton. According to the census of 1910 
the population of Canton is 50,217. 

Canton Flannel, a stout, twilled cot¬ 
ton cloth woven of soft twisted yarns, 
with a more or less dense nap on one side. 
If napped on both sides, the fabric is 
called double-faced. The name canton 
flannel is from Canton, China, from 
which place this fabric was first import¬ 
ed into England. Canton flannel is put 
on the market, bleached, unbleached, and 
dyed in plain colors. It is used as a sub¬ 
stitute for wool flannel; also for linings, 
bandages, and working gloves and mit¬ 
tens. It is sometimes called cotton flan¬ 
nel. 

Canute. See Knute. 

Canvas, a dense, heavy, plain-woven 
cloth of unbleached hemp or flax. Can¬ 
vas may be of many weights and qualities. 
It is used for a variety of purposes for 
which strength and durability are required. 
The heavier grades are used for tents, and 
for the sails of ships. Ships with all sails 


spread are said to be under heavy canvas. 
The smoothest varieties are used as a 
ground for embroidery and, stretched on 
frames, for oil paintings. Artists some¬ 
times speak of paintings as canvases. 
Many grades are used by tailors and dress¬ 
makers to stiffen certain parts of garments. 
The canvasback duck is so called because 
the back, when plucked, has the appear¬ 
ance of a piece of white, finely ridged and 
reticulated canvas. From the use of can¬ 
vas as a sifting or bolting cloth in mills, 
we acquire the expression to canvass, 
meaning to sift or examine with care. 
See Bayeux Tapestry. 

Canyon. See Grand Canyon ; Colo¬ 
rado River. 

Caoutchouc, koo'chdok, another name 
for rubber. See Rubber. 

Cap, a head covering provided some¬ 
times with a visor, but without a brim. 
The cap was unknown among the an¬ 
cients. Its introduction is credited to the 
French about the middle of the fifteenth 
century. When introduced none but the 
nobility were allowed to wear velvet caps, 
and its use was confined otherwise largely 
to the clergy and university students. In 
heraldry, the cap is an aristocratic symbol 
of freedom, whence the liberty cap on our 
coins. See Hat. 

Capaneus. See Seven against 
Thebes. 

Cape Breton Island, an island of 
northeastern Nova Scotia. It is separated 
from the peninsula of the mainland by the 
Strait of Canso, sixteen miles long and 
nowhere to exceed two miles in width. A 
deep bay cuts the island almost in two. 
The island was settled first by the French, 
who called it Isle Royale. It was de¬ 
fended by the fortress of Louisburg. The 
island was ceded to Great Britain in 1763, 
and was united to Nova Scotia in 1820. 
Area, 3,120 square miles. Population, 
about 30,000. The chief town is Syd¬ 
ney. A superior quality of bituminous 
coal is mined there. See Nova Scotia. 

Cape Cod, a curved cape and penin¬ 
sula forming the southern boundary of 
Massachusetts Bay. It is about sixty-five 
miles in length and varies from a mile to 
twenty miles in width. The surface con- 


CAPE HATTERAS—CAPE COLONY 


sists largely of bogs and shifting sands. 
The inhabitants are engaged in fishing 
and other occupations, depending largely 
on the sea. A canal has been completed to 
shorten the distance by sea from Boston 
to southern ports. Cape Cod was discov¬ 
ered by Captain Gosnold in 1602, and the 
name was given because of the number 
of codfish taken near it. Thoreau has 
written a very interesting volume, entitled 
Cape Cod, in which he makes many 
shrewd and instructive observations. The 
chief town is Provincetown, reached by 
rail. See Dunes; Cranberry; Gerry¬ 
mander. 

Cape Hatteras, a sandy spit forming 
the most eastern point of North Carolina. 
It is separated from the mainland by a 
shallow body of water called Pamlico 
Sound. The meeting of cool breezes from 
the north with the land breezes and the 
hot air of the Gulf Stream creates storms 
here, making the vicinity of Cape Hatter¬ 
as one of the most dangerous regions on 
the Atlantic coast. A large lighthouse 
with powerful lamps is maintained by the 
government to warn ships off the shore. 
The latitude of the lighthouse is 35° 15' 
14” N.; longitude, 75° 31' 17” W. 

Birds migrating southward are dazzled by 
the light, and strike the tower in great 
numbers. Collectors obtain many rare 
specimens in this way. 

Cape Horn, the southern point of the 
most southerly island of South America. 
Latitude, 55° 59' S.; longitude, 69° 

16' W. It is a precipitous rock over 500 
feet high. Currents from the Pacific and 
the Atlantic meet here, and fierce storms 
make the passage one much dreaded by 
sailors. It was named in 1616 by Dutch 
navigators from the town of Hoorn, 
Holland. English people have dropped 
an o out of the name. Sailors avoid 
rounding the Horn by taking a short cut 
to the northward through the Straits of 
Magellan. A floating cask is used as a 
postoffice. Passing ships send off a boat 
to leave and take mail. See Magellan. 

Cape of Good Hope , a promontory 
near the southern extremity of Africa. 
Cape Agulhas, 100 miles to the southeast, 
is the extremity of the continent. Cape 


of Good Hope is situated in latitude 34° 
21' S.; longitude 18° 30' E. It was dis¬ 
covered in 1487 by the Portuguese navi¬ 
gator, Bartholomew Diaz, and doubled 
again by Vasco da Gama in 1497. I hese 
navigators were exploring the coast in 
search of a sea route from western Europe 
to India. Diaz named it “Cape of 
Storms,” but King John of Portugal, who 
had high hopes of commercial advantage 
from the new route, insisted on the pres¬ 
ent name. The promontory follows a 
curve perhaps thirty miles in length. The 
very tip is known as Vasco da Gama Hill. 
Table Mountain, a flat-topped elevation, 
3,585 feet high, is about thirty miles from 
the tip. The name is taken from the flat 
table-like top, but it is rendered still more 
appropriate by the mists and clouds which 
not infrequently spread over the surface 
and hang over the sides like a table cloth. 
A British naval station is maintained 
within the eastern shelter of the Cape. 
Cape Town nestles at the foot of Table 
Mountain, fronting a bay that opens to 
the west. See Gama ; Dias. 

Cape of Good Hope, or Cape Col¬ 
ony, an important British colony at the 
southern point of Africa. Settlements 
were begun by the Dutch in 1652. The 
British took possession in 1795 and forced 
a sale to themselves at $30,000. The col¬ 
ony has been enlarged by successive addi¬ 
tions, until it comprises not only the ter¬ 
ritory lying south of the Orange River, 
but a considerable interior tract north of 
that river, in all an area of 276,995 square 
miles. It is now larger than Texas. The 
former and seemingly more appropriate 
name of Cape Colony has been changed 
to Cape of Good Hope Colony. The popu¬ 
lation in 1904 was returned at 2,409,804, 
an average of 8.7 per square mile. Three- 
fourths of the inhabitants are colored. Half 
of the white people are Dutch. 

The government consists of a governor 
and an elective parliament of two houses. 
English is the official language, but mem¬ 
bers may address the house in Dutch if 
they so prefer. Elections are by ballot. 
Electors must be householders, occupying 
a house worth $350, or be earners of a 
salary of not less thar $250 a year, in 



CAPER—CAPETIANS 


addition, a voter must be able to write 
his own name. These precautions are tak¬ 
en to shut out the ignorant natives; but 
the line, as enforced, is an educational 
and property line, not a color line. At¬ 
tendance at school is not compulsory. 
White children are provided with public 
and private schools. About one-sixth of 
the negro children are in school. 

The principal towns are Cape Town 
and Kimberley. The surface is rugged 
and elevated; large portions of the coun¬ 
try are still in a state of nature. The 
forest still shelters the African elephant. 
The baboon still haunts the rocks. The 
leopard, jackal, and antelope are found 
in the plains. The lion and giraffe are 
extinct. The ostrich is now bred in cap¬ 
tivity for the sake of its feathers. Over 
$9,000,000 worth were exported in 1907. 
Diamonds, gold, copper, valuable woods, 
grain, fruits, wool, sheep, feathers, and 
hides are the chief exports. In 1907 co¬ 
lonial products to the amount of $220,- 
000,000 were exported, chiefly to London. 

The mean temperature at Cape Town is 
sixty-two degrees. Generally speaking, 
the colony is lacking in rainfall. Irriga¬ 
tion is carried on extensively. One reser¬ 
voir covers nineteen square miles and 
holds 35,000,000,000,000 gallons of wa¬ 
ter. Wheat, oats, barley, rye, oat-hay, and 
wine are produced. There were in 1904 
1,954,000 cattle, 420,000 horses, 12,000,' 
000 sheep, 7,000,000 goats, 385,000 pigs, 
and 357,970 ostriches. 

The colony maintains a university of 
seven colleges. There are 131 public li¬ 
braries, 1,800 churches, over 2,000 schools, 
and 100 newspapers. 

Caper, a trailing shrub growing on 
old walls, rubbish heaps, and the like in 
Mediterranean countries. The unopened 
flower buds when put down in vinegar 
are called capers. These pickles are much 
used, especially in making caper sauce to 
serve with boiled mutton. The taste is 
sharp and bitter, quite unpleasant to those 
not accustomed to it. Travelers speak of 
the profuse white and purple flowers as an 
ornament of the rubbish heaps and ruins 
of the Levant. The plant was introduced 
into Great Britain as early as 1596. 


Capercailzie, ka-per-kal'zi, a fine, 
large bird of the grouse kind. The male 
bird weighs up to fifteen pounds. Its plu¬ 
mage is variegated,—black, brown, and 
white with a dark green breast and a 
patch of naked scarlet skin over one eye. 
It is found in extensive woods, and is 
often called the “cock of the woods.” It 
feeds on berries and buds and the tender 
shoots of fir. Formerly common to north¬ 
ern Europe, it is now confined to the 
evergreen covered mountains of Scotland, 
Scandinavia, Russia, and possibly portions 
of Asia. 

Capetians, or House of Capet, a royal 
family of France, reigning 987-1547. 
Hugh Capet, the first of the line, was 
elected by a council of nobles and clergy 
to succeed Louis V, the last of the Caro- 
lingians. He was a lay abbot and wore 
a capet, or abbot’s cape, of gray wool,— 
hence the name Capetian. Hugh was 
crowned king of the Gauls, Bretons, 
Danes, Normans, Aquitanians, Goths, 
Spaniards, and Gascons. It remained for 
the Capetians to weld together these di¬ 
verse elements and create a nation. The 
provinces of France, each under its own 
ruler, had the notion of states’ rights. 
The king had no power of general taxa¬ 
tion. His income came from his own 
possessions. He had his local army, as 
each feudal lord had his; but there was no 
national army. Each feudal lord legis¬ 
lated for his own territory; there were no 
national laws enforced by central authority. 
To overcome these evils and create France, 
the unit, was, therefore, the work accom¬ 
plished by the descendants of old Hugh 
Capet. The crown passed from father to 
oldest son eleven times, then twice to 
younger sons, then in 1328 to a cousin, 
Philip VI. He and his successors were 
Capetians by blood, but are known as the 
House of Valois. Indeed, all the later 
French kings were descended from Hugh 
Capet. The following table gives the 
Capetian kings with the dates of accession: 
Hugh Capet.... 987 Philip II (Au- 


Robert 

II.... 

... 996 

gustus) . . 

.... 1180 

Henry 

I. 

,.. 1031 

Louis VIII. 

.... 1223 

Philip 

I. 

... 1060 

Louis IX 

(the 

Louis 

VI. 

... 1108 

Saint) .., 

. 1226 

Louis 

VII.... 

... 1137 

Philip IIP. 

.... 1270 











CAPE TO CAIRO RAILWAY—CAPILLARITY 


Philip IV 

(the 


Charles VI.. 

.... 1380 

Fair) .. 


1285 

Charles VII. 

.... 1422 

Louis X... 


1314 

Louis XI.. . 

.... 1461 

Philip V... 


1316 

Charles VIII... 1483 

Charles IV, 


1322 

Louis XII.. 

.... 1498 

Philip VI 

(Va- 


Francis I. . . 

.... 1515 

lois) .. ., 


1328 

Ilenry II... 

.... 1547 

John. 


1350 

Francis II. . 

.... 1559 

Charles V 

(the 


Charles IX. 

.... 1560 

Wise) .., 


1364 

Henry III. 

1574-1589 


There is no other modern nation which owes 
so heavy a debt of gratitude to its ancient line 
of kings as the French. France, as it exists to¬ 
day, and has existed through all modern history, 
with all its glorious achievements, is their crea¬ 
tion and that of no one else.—George Burton 
Adams. 

Cape to Cairo Railway, a British proj¬ 
ect for the construction of a continuous 
railway from the Cape of Good Hope to 
the city of Cairo on the Nile. Forty- 
eight per cent of the road is now in oper¬ 
ation. Trains run northward from Cape 
Town by way of Kimberley and Victoria 
Falls on the Zambezi River, to Broken 
Hill, a rich upper region, a distance of 
1,984 miles. Trains run southward from 
Cairo up the valley of the Nile, as far as 
Assouan, a distance of 600 miles; then, 
after a gap of 220 miles covered by steam¬ 
ers, the train service may be resumed a 
distance of 560 miles to Khartum. The 
present ^1909) gap between Khartum and 
Victoria Falls is 2,500 miles wide. The 
Cape to Cairo route consists at the pres¬ 
ent time of three railroads having a total 
length of 3,044 miles, and two gaps of 
2,700 miles, half of which is traversable 
by water. London papers used to discuss 
the Cape to Cairo idea much as they 
would discuss a line to the moon; but an 
all-rail route from the Cape of Good Hope 
to Cairo is now an assured fact. The 
most difficult part of the route is the 
marshy region below Lake Albert Nyanza. 

Cape Town, the capital of Cape of 
Good Hope. It is situated at the foot 
of Table Mountain, about thirty miles 
from the tip of the cape, and fronts Table 
Bay, opening upon the Atlantic westward. 
The town was well laid out originally by 
the Dutch, who still form over half of 
the white population. Travelers are in¬ 
terested in Table Mountain, the Cape As¬ 
tronomical Observatory, and a botanic 
garden of fourteen acres. The city is well 


built. There are many fine churches. 
The most prominent is the Roman Catho¬ 
lic cathedral. The capitol is a command¬ 
ing edifice of recent construction. Cape 
Town is the educational and commercial 
center of South Africa. The harbor is 
protected by a breakwater nearly a mile 
long. There are two large docks afford¬ 
ing opportunity to repair ships and to 
scrape off barnacles. The Great Western 
Railway, the first link in the Cape to Cai¬ 
ro route, runs north from Cape Town. 
The population in 1911 was 135,000. 

Capillaries, in anatomy, fine hair-like 
tubes or blood vessels that lead from the 
ends of the arteries to the beginning of 
the veins. The diameter of a capillary is 
such as to allow a roll of blood disks or 
corpuscles to pass freely. They are so 
numerous, and they form so fine a network 
in ordinary parts of the body, that some 
are sure to be pierced by the prick of 
a pin. See Blood; Circulation. 

Capillar'ity, the phenomenon exhibited 
by liquids in their tendency to rise or be 
depressed near the walls of a containing 
vessel or within tubes thrust into the 
liquids. It is due to the relative attrac¬ 
tion between the particles of the liquid for 
each other and for the material of the ves¬ 
sel. If the liquid adheres to the tube 
or wets it, as when a glass tube is put in 
water, it rises in the tube; if it does not 
adhere, as in mercury, it is depressed. The 
smaller the tube, the greater the elevation 
or depression. 

Familiar examples of this same principle 
are the rise of ink in a blotter, or of oil in 
the wick of a lamp. By it also sap rises in 
trees, and fluids circulate through porous 
animal tissues. Capillarity is the explana¬ 
tion of the ability of water to rise above 
its natural level in soils and to furnish 
moisture for vegetation impossible with¬ 
out it. When the soil is compact so that 
the spaces are small, the moisture rises 
readily and is lost by evaporation. If, 
however, the surface is broken up, loosened 
and pulverized this loss is prevented. 
This is one of the means by which moisture 
is conserved in semi-arid regions, and is 
a principle in so-called dry-farming meth¬ 
ods. See Dry Farming. 


















CAPITAL PUNISHMENT—CAPRI 


Capital Punishment, the taking of 
life as a penalty for wrongdoing. In 
England, prior to the American Revolu¬ 
tion, 160 offenses were punishable with 
death. Among these were shoplifting, or 
stealing in shops to the amount of 
five shillings, and counterfeiting revenue 
stamps placed on perfumery and hair pow¬ 
der. Stealing a sheep was visited with 
the same penalty as killing a man. The 
main object of punishment being to deter 
others from committing crimes, the ad¬ 
visability of capital punishment has been 
questioned; imprisonment for life has been 
suggested, but few believe that a life sen¬ 
tence is dreaded as much as a death sen¬ 
tence. In England and other civilized 
countries death is now the penalty for 
murder and treason only. In the army 
and navy, offenders may be shot for vari¬ 
ous military offenses, including desertion 
and disobedience, and dangerous neglect 
of duty. President Lincoln interfered, it 
may be remembered, to save the life of a 
young sentry who had fallen asleep at 
the post of duty. Death by torture, such 
as burning at the stake and breaking on 
the wheel is no longer permitted by hu¬ 
mane governments. Beheading and hang¬ 
ing are the usual methods. Electrocu¬ 
tion, or death by a current of electricity, 
is instantaneous, and has been tried with 
success. It is prescribed by the laws of 
some states. Opinion in favor of execu¬ 
tions removed from the public gaze is 
growing. The hour chosen is not infre¬ 
quently midnight. In the United States 
the sentence of a court requires to be ap¬ 
proved and the date of execution set by 
the governor. 

Capitol, in American history, the offi¬ 
cial building at Washington occupied £>y 
Congress. A state capitol is occupied by 
a legislature and, ordinarily, by state offi¬ 
cers. The term corresponds to Parlia¬ 
ment House in England and the colonies. 
The capitol of Rome stood on the Capi- 
toline Hill. It was the central temple in 
which Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva were 
worshiped. 

The United States Capitol is situated 
on a low hill ninety-seven feet above the 
Potomac and one and one-third miles from 


the White House. The corner stone of 
the central building was laid by George 
Washington September 13, 1793. The 
building was partially destroyed by the 
British in 1814. The damage was re¬ 
paired and the building completed by 
1827. This portion consists of a rotunda 
and two short wings. It faces the east 
with a rear entrance on the west. The 
rotunda is an immense circular hall ninety- 
seven feet in diameter, springing from the 
floor to the vaulted ceiling of the dome 
overhead 180 feet in the clear. The out¬ 
side height of the dome, including the 
statue of Freedom, is 307j4 feet. The 
dome itself, the crowning glory of the city, 
is made of iron and weighs nearly 9,000,- 
000 pounds. It is so constructed that it 
may contract and expand with change of 
temperature like the folding and unfold¬ 
ing of the petals of a lily. It may be 
ascended by a spiral stairway for a view 
of the city. In 1851-9, an extension, al¬ 
most as large as the main building, was 
constructed on the south for the House 
and one to balance on the north for the 
Senate. They are connected with the 
main building by corridors. The old 
Senate chamber is occupied by the su¬ 
preme court. Congress has directed an 
enlargement of the main building toward 
the east to provide more committee rooms. 
The central part of the building is of 
Virginia sandstone. The extensions are 
of Massachusetts marble; the columns of 
the grand portico are single stones of 
Maryland marble. The sandstone has 
been painted white to harmonize. 

The historical paintings, statues of pub¬ 
lic men, bronze groups, corridors, and 
stairways are most instructive. The en¬ 
tire. building, including the halls of Con¬ 
gress, except when actually in use, is open 
to visitors freely. Every effort is made to 
have the people feel that it is their own. 

Capri, ka'pre, or Goat Island, an is¬ 
land in the Bay of Naples. Its area is 
about ten square miles. The inhabitants 
number between 4,000 and 5,000. They 
are occupied chiefly in fishing and in rais¬ 
ing olives and grapes. Capri wine is fa¬ 
mous. In the migrating season immense 
flocks of quails light to feed and rest. 


CAPTAIN CUTTLE—CAPYBARA 



They are taken in great numbers. Capri 
is noted chiefly for a number of remark¬ 
able grottoes 'or caves in the steep lime¬ 
stone coast. They are entered by boats. 
One is known as the blue grotto, another 
as the green, from the soft, delightful 
colors that prevail within. It is thought 
that the rays of the sun enter the sea 
and are decomposed, as in the case of 
the rainbow, and that only the blue or the 
green portion of the spectrum, as the case 
may be, is refracted at an angle requisite 
to enter the cave. The island is about 
nineteen miles from the city of Naples. 
It is a favorite resort of tourists and of 
artists. 

Captain Cuttle, a character in Dick¬ 
ens’ Dombey and Son. He is a retired 
sailor, “a very salt-looking man indeed.” 
On his first appearance on the scene he 
is described as “a gentleman in a wide 
suit of blue, with a hook instead of a hand 
attached to his right wrist; very bushy 
black eyebrows, and a thick stick in his 
left hand covered all over (like his nose) 
with knobs.” Captain Cuttle is an inti¬ 
mate friend of Sol Gills, the ship’s instru¬ 
ment maker. He is a simple, trustful, 
kind-hearted old fellow who, when he sees 
a friend in misfortune, is given to produc¬ 
ing and handing over his store of worldly 
wealth, “two withered atomies of tea¬ 
spoons, an obsolete pair of knock-kneed 
sugar tongs, an immense double-cased 
silver watch,” and a little cash. He de¬ 
cides to give the watch to Walter, old 
Sol’s nephew, as the young fellow, whose 
prospects are far from bright, is starting 
on a sea voyage. 

The captain drew Walter into a corner, and 
with a great effort, that made his face very red, 
pulled up the silver watch, which was so big, 
and so tight in his pocket, that it came out like 
a bung. 

“Wal’r,” said the captain, handing it over, 
and shaking him heartily by the hand, “a part¬ 
ing gift, my lad. Put it back half an hour every 
morning, and about another quarter towards the 
arternoon, and it’s a watch that ’ll do you credit.” 

A favorite expression of Captain Cut¬ 
tle’s, frequently quoted, is, “when found 
make a note of.” 

Capua, a city of ancient Italy. It was 
situated in the Plain of Campania, seven¬ 
teen miles north from Naples. It was 


founded by the Etruscans, came under 
Samnite rule about 423 B. C., and was. 
taken over by the Romans in 340 B. C. 
Capua was second only to Rome in size 
and exceeded that city in wealth and lux¬ 
ury. Capua opened its gates to Hannibal, 
who wintered here 216-15 B. C. The 
Romans retook the city and punished the 
inhabitants for disloyalty. Capua was 
headquarters for gladiatorial sports. The 
remains of an amphitheater rival those 
of the Roman Colosseum. Capua was 
sacked by Genseric 456 A. D., and was de¬ 
stroyed by the Saracens in 840. The site 
is now occupied by a small Italian village. 
See Campania; Gladiator. 

Capuchin, a branch of the monastic . 
order of St. Francis. The order was a 
seceding body of men who desired to re¬ 
form the Franciscans by a return to 
greater austerity of life. By a bull of 
Pope Clement VII, Capuchins obtained 
leave to wear a pointed hood or capuccio, 
from which comes the name Capuchins. 
“Consistently with the austerity of their 
professions, their churches were un¬ 
adorned, and their convents built in the 
simplest style. They became very service¬ 
able to the Church, and their fearlessness 
and assiduity in waiting upon the sick 
during the plague, which ravaged the 
whole of Italy, made them extremely pop¬ 
ular.” In the United States they have 
houses in New York, Milwaukee, and else¬ 
where. 

Capulet, kap'u-let, the father of Juliet 
in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. The 
name is the English spelling of Cappel- 
letti, a noble family of northern Italy, 
according to the tradition of Verona. 
Shakespeare’s Capulet, a self-willed, vio¬ 
lent old man, is the head of the family 
and is at variance with the house of Mon¬ 
tague, another noble Veronese family. 
See Romeo and Juliet. 

Capybara, ka-pe-ba'ra, a water-loving 
animal found in the tropical regions of 
South America, especially in the waters of 
the Orinoco, the Amazon, and the La 
Plata. It is the largest rodent known. 

It belongs to the guinea-pig family. It is 
intermediate between the hare and the por¬ 
cupine. It has a massive body covered 









CAR—CARACAS 


with brown hair, and bare legs terminat¬ 
ing in feet shaped rather for swimming 
than for walking. It has the stumpy tail 
of a small rabbit, a broad, flat head, small 
ears, the eyes of a pig, a broad nose, and 
teeth shaped like those of a muskrat. The 
Dutch settlers call it a water hare and 
sometimes a water hog. It lives in the 
grass along edges of streams, and takes to 
the water on the slightest alarm. It is the 
natural food of the South American ana¬ 
conda, or water constrictor. It is an in¬ 
offensive animal. It attains a weight of 
100 pounds. Its flesh is considered good 
eating. Its teeth are suitable for cutting 
off grass and sugar-cane, on which it chiefly 
feeds. Its visits are dreaded by the plant¬ 
er. See Guinea-Pig. 

Car, a term applied to several vehicles, 
but most frequently to a wagon drawn or 
propelled by mechanical power on some 
sort of a track or railway. The use of 
cars preceded the invention of the loco¬ 
motive. The first freight and passenger 
cars were coaches drawn by animal power. 
The car drawn by Stevenson’s first locomo¬ 
tive was a small, comfortless, wooden- 
seated affair, made out of an ordinary 
coach, very different from the palace of 
wood, iron, glass, and upholstery now 
found on American railways. In fact, the 
first passenger cars used in this country 
were the bodies of four-horse coaches set 
in a wheel-bearing frame, and the earliest 
railway ca?s were built on much the same 
model. Some were open or without a top, 
and some were built with outside seats 
on the top as well as seats inside. About 
1833 the long passenger car with entrances 
at the ends made its appearance. It was 
described in England as an American con¬ 
trivance built rather on the model of a 
ship than on that of a coach. 

The first sleeping car ran between Phil¬ 
adelphia and Baltimore in 1838. It ac¬ 
commodated twenty-four passengers. In 
1858 two sleeping cars were built at a 
cost of $5,000 for the two, for the run 
between Buffalo and Cleveland, but were 
not a profitable venture. In 1863 the 
first regular Pullman was built at a cost 
of $18,000, then considered a prodigious 
venture of money. The platform vesti¬ 


bule was thought out in 1887. Postal cars 
date from 1860. 

The latest available statistics show that 
the various American railroads maintain 
1,300 car shops for the repair and manu¬ 
facture of cars, and give additional pat¬ 
ronage to sixty-five car-building establish¬ 
ments. Over 200,000 people earn wages 
by building cars. Freight cars last about 
twelve or fifteen years. They wear out so 
fast that 125,000 new freight cars must 
be built in the United States each year. 
In addition, the factories expect to build 
about 2,000 passenger coaches and 10,000 
to 15,000 new street cars yearly. Five 
states, Pennsylvania, Illinois, New York, 
Indiana, and Ohio build over half of the 
cars needed. A few American cars are sold 
abroad. The export sales for 1900 aggre¬ 
gated $2,558,320, chiefly to Mexico, 
Egypt, France, Brazil, Great Britain, Ar¬ 
gentine, Australia, and Cuba. It is es¬ 
timated that there are in the world (1900) 
about 225,000 passenger coaches and 3,- 
000,000 freight cars. There is a tendency 
to construct cars of steel. They are safer 
in case of collision. 

The passenger coaches of Europe are 
divided by cross partitions into entirely 
distinct compartments. Each compart-* 
ment has two doors, one on each side of 
the car. To pass from one compartment 
to another it is necessary to alight from 
the car and walk along an outside foot¬ 
board or the station platform. It is quite 
out of the question to pass through a train. 
Each compartment seats ten passengers, 
five facing forward and five facing back¬ 
ward. 

At the master car-builders’ convention 
held in 1907 it was stated that there 
are approximately 50,000 locomotives, 
55,000 passenger coaches, and 2,000,000 
freight cars in use on the various railroads 
in the United States and Canada. The 
wear and tear of this equipment was said 
to be about $23,420 a day, or over $8,500,- 
000 a year. 

See Railroad. 

Caracas, ka-ra'kas, the capital city of 
Venezuela. Latitude, 10° 32' N.; longi¬ 
tude, 67° 4' W. The city was founded 
by Spaniards in 1567. The name is de- 


CARAT—CARAVAN 


rived from that of a tribe of Indians in¬ 
habiting the valley in which the city is 
situated. Caracas lies at an elevation of 
3,000 feet. It is the official and residence 
city. La Guayra, a few miles distant, is 
the port where business is done. A rail¬ 
way connects Caracas with La Guayra 
and three radiate from Caracas into the 
interior for ores and agricultural produc¬ 
tions and forest products. The city is 
well built. National resources have been 
used freely in erecting a capitol, presi¬ 
dential residence, a national library, mu¬ 
seum, etc. The most noteworthy church 
building is the cathedral, built about 1614. 
One public square is named for Bolivar; 
another for Washington. Electric lights, 
gas, telephone service, street railways, 
paving, clubs, business blocks, and hotels 
give the city a modern air. Population 
in 1905, about 80,000; La Guayra, 20,- 
000 . 

Carat, kar'at, a unit of weight for pre¬ 
cious stones. The word is derived from 
the Arabic, having reference to the horn¬ 
shaped pod of a locust tree, whose dried 
beans were used as weights. By a con¬ 
ference of jewelers held at Amsterdam in 
1877, the weight of a carat was fixed at 
205 milligrams or 151.76 carats to the 
troy ounce. In estimating the fineness of 
precious metals a carat is a twenty-fourth 
part. A ring eighteen carats fine con¬ 
tains eighteen twenty-fourths of pure gold. 
The standard fineness of a wedding ring 
is twenty-two carats. A gold chain 
should not be over fourteen carats fine if 
wearing qualities are desired. Twenty- 
four carats fine is said to be “solid gold.” 

Caravan, a company of pilgrims or 
merchants associated for protection in 
traveling through the wastes of Asia and 
Africa. Before the discovery of the mari¬ 
ner’s compass enabled sailors to venture 
out of sight of land, the commerce of the 
oriental countries was carried on overland 
by trains of laden camels. The cities of 
Asia Minor, of Syria, of the Tigris-Eu- 
phrates Valley, of Persia, and of Central 
Asia were built up by caravan traffic as 
railroads build up cities today. Ur of 
the Chaldees, Babylon, Nineveh, Cairo, 
Bagdad, and a hundred other cities of the 


ancient world were caravan centers of 
enormous business and wealth. Instead 
of railroad trains bringing and carrying 
goods long trains of camels from the East 
brought bales of rugs, carpets, shawls, 
tea, spices, perfumery, and gems from 
Persia, China, and India, and returned 
laden with western products brought by 
similar caravans to these centers of distri¬ 
bution. 

Caravans were voluntary associations. 
The village merchant or chief with a few 
camels joined his neighbors at a central 
point, and traveled on to a larger center 
until, at a stated time, a multitude of 
camels and men gathered for a journey of 
months to a distant emporium as their 
fathers before them had done for a thou¬ 
sand years. As many as a thousand or 
even five thousand camels not infrequently 
traveled in a single caravan, winding 
through the sand-hills in a file two or 
three miles in length. Only the richest 
goods could bear the expense of distant 
caravan transportation. It is no fanciful 
computation to reckon that the merchants 
of an opulent oriental city may have im¬ 
ported or shipped out goods worth a million 
dollars by a single caravan. Each caravan 
chose its own leader. Laden camels 
traveled from eighteen to thirty miles a 
day. They were seemingly indifferent to 
where they went and had to be kept in 
line by drivers or they would wander away 
cropping shrubs, and be swallowed up in 
the desert. 

Caravans are still the chief means of 
collecting and distributing goods in the 
northern part of Africa and in many parts 
of Asia; but the immense caravan business 
between central and western Asia has been 
broken up by railroads and steamers. At 
present the chief commercial caravan 
routes radiate from the seaports along the 
southern shore of the Mediterranean. 
Three notable caravans meet annually at 
a religious fair at Mecca. The Persians 
gathering at Bagdad, the Arabs of the 
Sahara, at Cairo, and the Arabians, at 
Damascus, come together at Mecca to sell 
and buy and to visit the tomb of Mahomet. 

See Aden; Mecca; Camel; Timbuc- 
too. 




CARAWAY—CARBON DIOXIDE 


Caraway, a plant of the parsley fami¬ 
ly. It is found wild in southern Europe 
and some parts of Asia. The seeds are 
much used for flavoring cookies, bread, 
and cheese. Caraway is also a medicine, 
and an oil pressed from the seed is used 
as a perfume. If left to do as it pleases 
earaway is pretty apt to take care of itself 
about dooryards. 

Carbolic Acid, a well known com¬ 
pound of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. 
In the pure state, it takes the form of 
white crystalline needles. Ordinarily it is 
a liquid somewhat heavier than water, and 
having a slightly acid taste. It is ob¬ 
tained in the distillation of coal tar. Car¬ 
bolic acid has many uses. It kills bacteria. 
Surgeons use a weak solution to sterilize 
their instruments and as an antiseptic 
dressing for wounds. Under medical ad¬ 
vice it may be taken in minute quantities 
as a remedy. It is a rank poison. Two 
or three drops of pure carbolic acid are 
sufficient to cause death. It is terribly 
painful in its action. Alcohol is the best 
antidote. See Medicine. 

Carbon, one of the important chemic¬ 
al elements. Pure carbon occurs in two 
widely different forms, the diamond and 
graphite or * plumbago. Charcoal, soft 
coal, and hard coal are largely carbon. 
The purer the carbon, the better the qual¬ 
ity of the coal. Under ordinary circum¬ 
stances carbon is an inactive element. A 
piece of charcoal, or graphite, or a dia¬ 
mond will lie for ages in ordinary water 
unchanged. They are without taste or 
odor and cannot be melted; yet under 
favorable conditions carbon is distin¬ 
guished for the number of chemical com¬ 
binations into which it enters. 

Carbon is the great fuel. Under the in¬ 
fluence of heat it burns; that is, it unites 
with oxygen and disappears in a gas. In 
coal, kerosene, gas, oil, fat, lard, tallow, 
suet, blubber, wood, or any form of fuel 
whatever, carbon is the element which 
burns and, uniting with oxygen, gives heat 
and light. 

Carbon is an important and indispen¬ 
sable part of animal and plant life. Any 
substance that chars with "heat contains 
carbon. Charcoal is merely the carbon of 


wood left behind when the volatile parts 
of the wood are evaporated by heat. A 
black char of carbon may be obtained 
from any flesh or vegetable substance by 
driving off the other substances by heating. 

Black as carbon is, it is an important 
part of all the grains. Green grass, hay, 
sugar, starch, alcohol, limestone, marble, 
and chalk contain carbon. It is present 
in tea, coffee, bread, wine, vinegar, milk, 
and in almost every article, especially 
fatty articles of food. A trace is present 
in all spring water, and mineral waters of 
note contain considerable quantities of 
carbon. 

Carbonari, kar-bo-na/ri, a secret revo¬ 
lutionary society in Italy. It was formed 
in the days of Napoleon to drive out 
the French. It was prolonged to expel 
the Austrians and to unite Italy. The 
name signifies charcoal burners. Their 
places of meeting were called huts; Italy, 
the forest; and their enemies, the wolves. 
They were known to each other as good 
cousins. They had no central organiza¬ 
tion. Their number, therefore, is not 
known, but is estimated at half a million 
in 1820-1. They imitated many observ¬ 
ances Of the Masons. The order was suc¬ 
ceeded by Young Italy, founded by Maz- 
zini. 

Carbon Dioxide, or Carbonic Acid 
Gas, a well known compound containing 
one atom of carbon and two of oxygen. 
It is colorless. It exists in small quanti¬ 
ties in atmospheric air, from three to four 
parts in every ten thousand being carbon 
dioxide. It escapes from many mineral 
springs, and is found at the bottom of 
mines and in caves. It is formed also by 
the imperfect burning of fuel, by the 
breathing of animals, by fermentation, 
and by the decay of animal and vegetable 
matter. Like other animals, people emit 
carbon dioxide in breathing. Carbon di¬ 
oxide is incombustible. It will put out 
the flame of a lighted candle, gas jet, or 
even a piece of burning phosphorus, when 
these are placed in a jar filled with the 
gas. It is not poisonous, but it does not 
support animal life. Carbon dioxide in 
the air prevents the lungs from obtaining 
needed oxygen. A person dies in air con- 


CARBONIFEROUS AGE—CARDIFF GIANT 


taining an excess of carbon dioxide just 
as he dies in water, not by reason of 
poisonous qualities belonging to the car¬ 
bon dioxide or to the water, but because 
air is shut out of the lungs. For this 
reason dwelling houses, especially sleeping 
rooms, should be ventilated thoroughly. 
Being heavier than air the carbonic gas 
settles to the floor. In Paris the city 
poundmaster incloses stray dogs, thirty at 
a time, in an iron lethal chamber and 
drives in carbonic acid gas. In forty 
seconds death ensues from suffocation— 
want of air. 

In volcanic regions where the crust of 
the earth is thin in places, carbon dioxide 
sometimes issues so abundantly as to form 
white, cloud-like masses above the fissures. 
In the region of Vesuvius, there are several 
such thin-crusted places. One is the cra¬ 
ter of the extinct volcano, Solfatara; an¬ 
other is the so-called Grotta del Cane, or 
Cave of Dogs, near Naples. This cave 
receives its name from the fact that if dogs 
were thrown into it, or witlessly entered 
it, death followed in a few seconds. The 
Romans of Caesar’s time used to throw in 
slaves whom they wished to kill or other 
helpless creatures from whom they de¬ 
sired to free themselves. This cave, the 
Grotta del Cane, can be seen today in the 
same condition in which it existed during 
the time of the Roman Empire. The 
Upas Valley in Java, about three-fourths 
of a mile long, is another region in which 
carbon dioxide is fatal to animal life. No 
animal can live here. It is said that the 
valley is strewn with the bones of ani¬ 
mals which have been suffocated by the 
fumes and with the remains of birds that 
have perished while flying over it. 

* While it is true that air is unfit to 
breathe if it contains an excess of carbon 
dioxide the reader should get away from 
the idea that it is a poison. In fact, the 
gas, like water, is one of the beneficent 
provisions of nature. It is present in 
small quantities in the atmosphere. Taken 
in through the breathing pores, the stoma¬ 
ta of plants, it forms a large part of the 
tissues of the vegetable world. The starch 
of rice, wheat, corn, potatoes, and ba¬ 
nanas, in short, of all starchy food plants, 


is built up out of carbon dioxide and 
water. The gas is inhaled with air by 
the leaves; the water is imbibed by the 
roots. Sugar-cane, the sugar beet, and all 
the fruits, build up their sweets from the 
same two materials obtained likewise by 
leaf and root. Fats are built up of 
starches or sugars, and are likewise com¬ 
posed of carbon dioxide and water. The 
farmer who sells fat hogs, fat steers, but¬ 
ter, cheese, sugar beets, sugar-cane, fine 
flour, and potatoes is marketing little but 
water and a gas, millions and billions of 
pounds of which are dissolved in the at¬ 
mosphere. 

Carbon dioxide is in the way in the 
lungs and it is cast out by the blood, yet 
it is, as we have seen, an important con¬ 
stituent of foods. While carbon dioxide 
is out of place when inhaled, it can be 
taken into the stomach and is then re¬ 
freshing. For that reason, it is used to 
charge the so-called “carbonated waters” 
and give them sparkle. 

Shells, corals, and chalk are composed 
of a compound of carbon dioxide with 
calcium and oxygen. 

Carboniferous Age. See Coal. 

Carborundum, the trade name of a 
compound of silicon and carbon. It is 
produced by fusing sand and carbon. 
The process was hit upon about 1890. 
Two electric furnaces at Niagara Falls 
are the chief source of the commercial sup¬ 
ply. About 1,500 tons are made yearly. 
Carborundum has superior qualities as 
glazing for fireproof brick used in fur¬ 
nace buildings. Furnace linings may be 
protected by a paste of finely ground car¬ 
borundum applied with a brush. It is 
used chiefly as a substitute for corundum 
and emery in the manufacture of “emery” 
wheels for grinding tools. See Corun¬ 
dum ; Emery. 

Carboy. See Bottle; Demijohn. 

Cardiff Giant, an American fraud. 
In 1868 an adventurer purchased a block 
of gypsum from a quarryman at .Fort 
Dodge, Iowa. F[e shipped it to Chicago, 
where it was given in charge of a sculp¬ 
tor, who carved it into a ten foot giant. 
He pricked it with needles while it was 
soft to give the surface the appearance of 


CARDINAL BIRD—CARDING 


the human skin, and treated it with acids 
to give it an ancient appearance. The 
giant was then packed in an iron box and 
shipped to Union, New York, where it 
was claimed by the owner, loaded on a 
large wagon, and drawn with four horses 
fifty miles to a farm near Cardiff, a post 
village in Onondaga County. The giant 
was buried and remained until October 
16, 1869, nearly a year, when it was “ac¬ 
cidentally” discovered by men who were 
pretending to dig a well. The petrified 
giant, as it was called, created the great¬ 
est astonishment. The lucky finders cov¬ 
ered it with a tent. Special trains were 
run from New York City. It is esti¬ 
mated that 50,000 people paid a dollar 
apiece to see the wonder. Even men who 
prided themselves on scientific knowledge 
were for a time deceived. Finally, how¬ 
ever, one of them broke off a fragment 
and discovered that it consisted, not of 
stone, but of gypsum, a soft substance re¬ 
sembling plaster of Paris. The perpetra¬ 
tors owned up to the fraud. The Car¬ 
diff giant was the most successful hoax 
ever perpetrated upon the American 
people. See Barnum ; Gypsum. 

Cardinal Bird, or Cardinal Gros¬ 
beak, a member of the sparrow or finch 
family. The cardinal is a lordly, clumsy, 
rose-red fellow with a large crest and a 
black throat. The female is olive brown. 
The cardinal breeds from Minnesota to 
the Gulf and eastward, nesting in bush¬ 
es and making itself useful by eating 
grubs and worms. Both sexes sing well, 
and are favorite cage birds. Mrs. Olive 
Thorne Miller has written entertainingly 
of the cardinal. 

One’s first impression of the cardinal gros¬ 
beak will usually be that he is rather a clumsy 
fellow. His body appears to be stiff, as if it 
were made of wood, different in every way from 
the pliant, lithe body of the catbird, for example. 
He hops about on the ground with tail held well 
up out of harm’s way, and comes heavily down 
upon his feet, as if his body were really very 
solid. In fact, he is not at all a graceful 
bird. . . . 

As the head of a family, the cardinal is ad¬ 
mirable, not only in his attentions to his lovely 
dove-colored mate, but in singing to‘her by the 
hour, and in protecting her from intrusion or 
danger. To the young in the nest he is an un¬ 
tiring provider of worms and grubs, and thus 
most useful in a garden. Nothing can be more 


comical than his behavior when he first conducts 
his young family out into the world while his 
mate is engaged with her second sitting. He is as 
fussy as any young mother, hopping about in 
great excitement, and appearing to think the 
whole world thirsting for the life of his pretty 
little ones. 

The cardinal mother shows the restless man¬ 
ners and anxious spirit of her mate, taking one’s 
intrusion upon her domestic affairs greatly to 
heart, and being so much disturbed that there is 
more pain than pleasure in making acquaintance 
with her nestlings. 

See Grosbeak. 

Cardinals, next to the pope, the highest 
dignitaries in the Roman Catholic church. 
The college of cardinals, charged with the 
duty of electing the pope, consists of sev¬ 
enty members, though the college is 
seldom, if ever, full. The pope fills va¬ 
cancies by appointment. Scarlet is the dis¬ 
tinguishing color of the cardinal. The 
pope signifies an appointment by sending 
a messenger to place an official scarlet hat 
on the head of the bishop or archbishop 
whom he wishes to honor; hence the ex¬ 
pression “to send a red hat,” or, “to re¬ 
ceive a red hat.” Other articles of a 
cardinal’s attire are a red cap, a purple 
cassock, a sapphire ring, and a mitre of 
white silk. Archbishop McClosky be¬ 
came the first American cardinal 1875. In 
1906, 7 cardinals were Spanish; 6 French; 
3 German; 1 Belgian; 1 Brazilian; 3 
Austrian; 2 Hungarian; 1 American; 1 
Bohemian; 3 British and Irish; the rest 
were Italians. See Papacy. 

Carding and Combing, in the manu¬ 
facture of textiles, processes employed to 
prepare raw cotton, wool, silk, etc., for 
spinning. The terms are often used syn¬ 
onymously, and the two processes are 
closely related, combing being a contin¬ 
uation of the carding principle. Carding 
opens up or loosens the raw material, pull¬ 
ing fiber from fiber, tearing apart any 
that are matted and leaving the mass 
loose, free, and soft. Combing extracts 
from this mass short and broken fibers, 
and lays the long fibers in a parallel posi¬ 
tion. Both processes help to free the fiber 
from small foreign litter, broken leaves, 
stems, sand, etc. It is evident that mate¬ 
rial of very short fiber, like American cot¬ 
ton, the fibers of which are less than an 
inch in length, cannot be combed success- 


CARDING AND COMBING 


fully, but that the process of combing, 
when it can be employed, produces a 
smoother and stronger yarn than that 
made by carding alone. A description 
of the implements used formerly in hand 
carding and combing may serve to make 
clear the distinction in the two processes. 

The hand method of carding is still 
used by housewives to prepare small quan¬ 
tities of wool for domestic purposes, or to 
renovate wool which has become matted 
by use. Two “cards” are used. These 
are simply oblong pieces of wood set with 
short iron teeth, as a brush is set with 
bristles, and furnished with handles. One 
card is held in the left hand with teeth 
uppermost. A quantity of cleaned and 
scoured wool is placed on this card. The 
other card, held in the right hand, is 
drawn over the wool gently. This process 
is repeated over and over until the mass 
is torn up and blended and distributed 
evenly over the cards. The wool .is then 
lifted from the card and is shaped gently 
in the hands into a loose roll ready for 
spinning. 

In combing by hand two “combs” are 
used. These are strips of wood furnished 
with handles and set with two rows of 
long steel teeth or spikes. The workman 
attaches one of his combs, teeth outward, 
to a comb-post. He then seizes a hand¬ 
ful of the wool, which is warmed and oil¬ 
ed, and draws it through the comb, leav¬ 
ing a portion caught in the teeth. In this 
way he fills both combs with fiber. Then, 
holding one comb in his left hand, he 
takes the other in his right, and comb3 
out the entangled fibers, first those near 
the tips of the teeth, gradually working 
deeper and deeper into the mass. At the 
last the teeth are worked close up to 
each other. If one possesses the skill and 
“knack” for this work, the result is the 
extraction of short fibers and the laying 
of longer ones in a comparatively parallel 
position. Machinery is now in use to 
perform both processes of carding and 
combing. 

Wool is always carded. It is combed 
only when it is to be spun into “worsted” 
yarns. In this process the laying of the 
fiber in a parallel position is called fre¬ 


quently “gilling,” the word “combing” 
having reference to the removal of short 
fibers. The machine employed is intricate 
and delicate. Formerly cotton was spun 
without either carding or combing. At 
present it is carded usually, but for ordi¬ 
nary purposes a sufficiently good quality 
of yarn is produced without the addition¬ 
al process of combing. 

Three distinct operations are included 
under carding. Opening, that is, loosen¬ 
ing up the masses of fiber and removing 
heavy impurities; scutching, which still 
further cleanses the fiber and spreads it 
into a wide “lap”; and carding proper, 
which continues the opening process until 
the fibers are separated one from the oth¬ 
er, removes many short, unripe, and bro¬ 
ken fibers, together with fine sand and 
other foreign particles, and finally reduces 
the lap or sheet to a loose, soft, contin¬ 
uous rope, called a “sliver.” This is re¬ 
garded as one of the most beautiful 
processes that can be seen in a mill or 
factory. One yard of the “lap” from the 
scutcher weighs about one hundred times 
as much as does the “sliver” into which it 
is made in the carding machine. Some 
idea of the cotton carding machine may be 
had from the statement that a cylinder of 
this machine, forty inches wide and fifty 
inches in diameter, bears over 3,000,000 
teeth. 

t _ » 

For sewing and machine thread, fine 
hosiery, lace curtains, imitation silks, and 
certain fine cotton fabrics, the combing 
of the fiber is considered essential. Sea- 
island and brown Egyptian cotton are 
classed as long-stapled, because the fiber is 
sufficiently long to admit of combing. 
No machine in cotton spinning adds one- 
half as much to the expense of producing 
the yarns as does the comber. One reason 
for this is the fact that the comber makes 
about seventeen per cent of waste, which 
is as much as the combined waste of all 
the other machines in the mill. 

In the manufacture of silk textiles, tne 
“reel” silk needs no carding or combing. 
The “spun” or waste silk is carded and 
combed by processes resembling those 
used in carding cotton. In preparing 
flax for spinning, the process which cor- 


CARDS—CARIBOU 


responds with carding and combing is 
called hackling. 

Cards, oblong bits of pasteboard used 
in playing various games. A pack of or¬ 
dinary playing cards consists of four 
suits of thirteen cards each, or fifty-two 
cards in all. The suits are marked with 
hearts, diamonds, clubs, and spades re¬ 
spectively. Each suit contains a king, 
queen, knave, and ten cards ranging from 
a ten spot down to a one spot known as an 
ace. The cards rank in the order named, 
though in some games exceptions are 
made. In whist, for instance, ace is the 
highest. In euchre the knaves or jacks, 
as they are also called, outrank. In most 
games a particular suit is called trumps, 
in which case any card of that suit out¬ 
ranks even a king or an ace of any other 
suit. In many games a fifty-third card, 
called a joker, is added. The joker is al¬ 
ways a trump and is the highest card in 
the pack. 

Cards are thought to be of eastern ori¬ 
gin. They made their way westward 
along the lines of caravan travel, and 
may have been introduced into Europe 
by the Saracens. The modern figures on 
cards are said to have been invented in 
France fifty years before the discovery of 
America. The four suits stood for four 
ranks in society. Hearts is an English 
corruption of a French word meaning 
choirmen or clergy; spades is likewise a 
corruption of a Spanish word signifying 
the sword. They represent the soldiers; 
clubs, the clover leaf, is the suit of the 
peasantry; and diamonds represent the 
square tiles or caps of the merchants. These 
names are by no means universal. The 
suits in an Italian and Spanish deck of 
cards were known as cups, swords, money, 
and clubs. The German suits were 
hearts, leaves, bells, and acorns. The 
Hindus played with geese, birds, camels, 
and horses. 

Some games of cards, as poker and 
hearts, may be played by a circle. The 
different games of whist are played by four 
persons. Two may play at cribbage, 
penuchle, and bezique. Solitaire, in all its 
forms, is a game to be played alone. 

See Games. 

11-4 


Carex. See Sedge. 

Caribbean Sea, an arm of the Atlantic, 
lying between the West Indies and the 
coasts of Central and South America. 
The Caribbean is larger than the Gulf 
of Mexico. Its basin comprises 750,000 
square miles—one-fourth as large as the 
United States. The basin is a huge 
mountain cup. The coasts are not contin¬ 
uous, but they are everywhere mountain¬ 
ous. The water varies in depth from shal¬ 
lows to abysses. The floor of the sea is 
uneven. Bartlett Trough is described as 
a chasm a few miles wide but hundreds 
of miles in length and three miles deep. 
An equatorial current enters the Caribbean 
Sea through the passages of the Wind¬ 
ward Islands and, continuing westward, 
sweeps through Yucatan Channel into the 
Gulf of Mexico. The trade winds bring 
tropical moisture that falls—literally 
falls—in sheets that the inhabitants of 
more temperate climes know not of. 
Destructive tempests are not infrequent. 
The temperature is “modified by the trade 
winds,” but to the northern traveler the 
navigation of the Caribbean is associated 
with much torrid discomfort. The name 
is derived from the Caribs, an Indian 
family yet dwelling in places on the coasts 
and islands of this great sea. 

Caribou, kar'i-boo, an American rein¬ 
deer ranging from Maine to Lake Supe¬ 
rior and northward. With the exception 
of the musk-ox, it ranges farther north 
than any other hoofed animal. There 
are two groups or species, the woodland 
and the barren ground caribou. The lat¬ 
ter ranges further to the north, beyond 
the limit of timber, but retires southward 
in herds of thousands in the winter time. 
The woodland caribou is of a dun gray 
color and is about three and one-half feet 
high at the shoulder. Its fleetness re¬ 
minds one of the antelope. It lives 
mainly on lichens. The antlers are flat¬ 
tened somewhat like those of a moose. Its 
numbers have been greatly diminished by 
persistent and merciless hunting. An in¬ 
teresting account of a caribou school, as 
well as other sketches of caribou life, are 
given by William J. Long in his Wilder¬ 
ness Ways. See Reindeer. 


CARICATURE—CARLETON 


Caricature, an absurd or laughable 
exaggeration. To be successful, caricature 
must be founded on fact. A person with 
a short chin may be represented with an 
absurdly short chin; one with a long chin 
with an absurdly long chin. The Japs 
may be represented as midgets because 
they are not large, but it would not be 
caricature to represent them as giants in 
stature. Successful caricature must lean in 
the same direction as the facts. Caricature 
may be drawn with a pen or a pencil. In 
Hudibras, Butler caricatures the Puritan. 
Cervantes’ Don Quixote is a caricature of 
the knight and his squire. The writings 
of Steele and Addison in the Spectator are 
full of caricature. Hogarth caricatured 
London vices of the eighteenth century 
in several series of pictures. The London 
Punch caricatured President Lincoln. 
Thomas Nast and Harper's Weekly liter¬ 
ally goaded Boss Tweed to his death. 
The picture of Tweed in prison stripes 
with a ball and chain on his leg is fixed 
in the history of New York. Comic pic¬ 
tures are usually caricatures. They are 
becoming more and more a feature of the 
newspaper. An editorial may be unread 
for want of time, but a picture of a no¬ 
toriously corrupt city council with masks, 
dark lanterns, and burglar’s jimmies, en¬ 
gaged in prying open the public treasury, 
is taken in at a glance and fastens it¬ 
self upon the retina of the mind as well. 
The coarse work of cheap St. Valentine 
prints has no place in art. Effective cari¬ 
cature requires talent and study. See 
Nast; Punch; Thackeray; Tweed; 
Hogarth. 

Carleton, Will (1845-1912), an Amer¬ 
ican poet. He was born at Hudson, Mich¬ 
igan, and educated at Hillsdale College. He 
made his home for some years in Brook¬ 
lyn, New York. He wrote several vol¬ 
umes of verse. The best known are Farm 
Ballads, Farm Legends, Farm Festivals, 
City Ballads, City Legends, and City Fes¬ 
tivals. Mr. Carleton was very success¬ 
ful as a lecturer and reader of his own 
ballads. Among his most popular poems 
are Betsy and I are Out, Over the Hill to 
the Poor House, The First Settler's Story, 
The Chicago Fire, and The Christinas 


Baby. Carleton was a poet of the home. 
He presents the humorous and tragic inci¬ 
dents of farm and country life in the 
form of dramatic monologue. His char¬ 
acters are honest, brave, and kindly. 
Their homely speech seems a fitting vehi¬ 
cle for the expression of deep but simple 
feeling. In The New Church Organ the 
good sister tells how she dislikes the “new 
machine,” and disapproves of “praising 
the Lord by note” : 

“I’ve been a sister, good an’ true, 

For five-an’-thirty year; 

I’ve done what seemed my part to do, 

And prayed my duty clear; 

But Death will stop my voice, I know, 

For he is on my track; 

And some day I to church will go, 

And never more come back; 

And when the folks gets up to sing— 
Whene’er that time shall be— 

I do not want no patent thing 
A-squealin’ over me !” 

Carleton, Sir Guy (1724-1808), a 
British general and colonial governor. He 
was born in Ireland and entered the army 
at an early age. He saw active service un¬ 
der Amherst at Louisbourg in 1758, under 
Wolfe at Quebec the following year, and in 
the British attack in Havana in 1762. He 
became lieutenant governor of Quebec in 
1766 and for the following 40 years was 
active in Canadian affairs. At the outbreak 
of the Revolution, he was commander of 
the British army in Canada, and defeated 
the attempts of the Americans to force 
Canada to join with them. He invaded 
New York in 1776, but was superseded in 
command the following year by General 
Burgoyne. In 1782 he again became the 
commander-in-chief of the British army in 
North America. He later became governor 
of Quebec, and was rewarded for his serv¬ 
ices in saving British North America to 
England by being created Baron Dor¬ 
chester. 

Carleton’s fame rests not only on his 
military services, but also his ability in a 
governmental capacity. His position as an 
English governor over the recently con¬ 
quered French was a delicate one. Though 
his rule was stern, it was humane and just. 
He is said to have inspired the Quebec Act 
of 1774 and helped frame the Act of 1791 
by which Canada became two provinces. 


CARLETON—CARLOVITZ 


Carleton, William (1798-1869), an 
Irish novelist. He was born in County 
Tyrone of humble parentage, with but 
such education as a hedge school and 
a brief term or two at an academy could 
afford. He went to Dublin, took up writ¬ 
ing and there in 1830 published his first 
series of Traits and Stories of the Irish 
Peasantry. 

The vein of Irish stories opened up by 
this writer is a delightful and pathetic one. 
Hedge schools, crop failures, shanty life, 
bog trotting, secret whiskey stills, wedding 
feasts, dances, races, deaths, wakes, fairs, 
boycotts, murder trials, and rescues are 
told with a keen zest worthy of compari¬ 
son with Burns’s Tam o } Shanter, Gold¬ 
smith’s Vicar of Wakefield, and Irving’s 
Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Carleton’s 
other writings are Fardarougha the Miser, 
by many considered his best; Valentine 
M’Cluichy; The Misfortunes of Barney 
Branigan; and Willie Reilly. For sev¬ 
eral years before his death Carleton re¬ 
ceived a pension of $1,000 a year. 

Carlisle, the seat of Cumberland, Eng¬ 
land. It is situated at the junction of 
three streams. Carlisle was an important 
Roman outpost. The Solway end of Ha¬ 
drian’s wall is near here. The Danes sack¬ 
ed the town in 875. Mary, Queen of 
Scots, was imprisoned here in 1568; the 
castle is still standing. The most noted 
building is a cathedral begun by William 
Rufus. The Norman nave has been des¬ 
troyed. The choir, a beautiful building 
in itself, still stands. It is noted for a 
handsome stained glass window, fifty by 
thirty feet. There are important manu¬ 
factures of gingham and other cotton 
goods. Population, about 45,000. 

Carlisle, kar-111', John Griffin (1835- 
1910), an American statesman. He was 
born in Kentucky, and was educated for the 
practice of law. He was sent to the legisla¬ 
ture and from 1871 to 1875 was lieutenant 
governor of his state. In 1877 he was elected 
to Congress. He served for seven terms, 
being speaker of the House from 1883 to 
1889. In 1890 he was elected senator. 
In 1893 he was secretary of the treasury 
under President Cleveland, in which office 
he is remembered as having advocated the 


gold standard, and as having been connect¬ 
ed with the sale of bonds to replenish the 
treasury’s gold reserve. At the close of 
Cleveland’s term of office, Carlisle took up 
the practice of law in New York. 

Carlisle, kar-lIT, Institute, a govern¬ 
ment school for the higher education of 
Indian young men and women. It is lo¬ 
cated at Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The 
school had its origin in the work of Captain 
R. H. Pratt at St. Augustine, Florida, in 
1875. Captain Pratt had in charge 
seventy-four Indian prisoners whom he un¬ 
dertook to educate along industrial lines. 
Four years later the school was removed to 
Carlisle, and a grant made for its support 
by the government. Literary subjects were 
introduced into the course of study, but 
various trades are also taught and it is 
customary to arrange for each student to 
spend a few weeks or months of the year 
in the family of some farmer. It is ex¬ 
pected that he will earn wages, and will be 
given also an opportunity to learn the cus¬ 
toms of white people. 

Carlists, in history, the supporters of 
the pretension of Carlos, a brother of 
Ferdinand VII, to the Spanish throne. 
They were and are yet the Absolutists of 
Spain. In religion and politics a compari¬ 
son may be drawn between Carlos and 
the Carlists of Spain and the Pretender 
and the Jacobites of Great Britain. See 
Castelar. 

Carlovitz, or Karlowitz, Peace of, 

a peace concluded January 26, 1699, be¬ 
tween Austria, Poland, Venice, Russia, and 
Turkey, with the good offices of England 
and the Netherlands. Austria received 
large accessions of territory in Transyl¬ 
vania and Hungary; Russia gained Azov 
on the Black Sea. 

The treaty of Carlovitz is memorable, not 
only on account of the magnitude of the terri¬ 
torial change which it ratified ; not only because 
it marks the period when men ceased to dread 
the Ottoman Empire as an aggressive power; 
but, also, because it was then that the Porte 
and Russia took part, for the first time, in a 
general European Congress; and because, by 
admitting to that Congress the representatives 
of England and Holland, neither of which states 
was a party to the war, both the Sultan and the 
Czar thus admitted the principle of intervention 
of the European powers, one with another, for 


CARLSBAD—CARLYLE 


the sake of the general good.—Creasy, History 
of the Ottoman Turks. 

Carlsbad, karls'bad (Charles’s Bath), 
a city of Bohemia built up around the 
celebrated hot springs of that name. The 
name was given in honor of Emperor 
Charles IV, who is said to have discover¬ 
ed the value of their waters a hundred 
years before the birth of Columbus. The 
waters of the springs are charged with 
salts, and are of remarkable virtue in 
curing rheumatism, gout, and kindred ail¬ 
ments. The water is drunk on the spot. 
It is bottled also and sold throughout 
Europe and America. Carlsbad is a well 
built city of 15,000 inhabitants, with ho¬ 
tels, hospitals, theaters, opera houses, con¬ 
cert gardens, and every other convenience 
or luxury that wealth can supply. It has 
long been a brilliant social center. Arch¬ 
duke Ferdinand, George III, Augustus I 
of Poland, Peter the Great, Leibnitz, 
Maria Theresa, Goethe, Schiller, Beetho¬ 
ven, Wellington, Bismarck', and thousands 
of other celebrated persons, together with 
the aristocracy of Europe, have visited 
Carlsbad to regain their health or for so¬ 
cial pleasures. About 25,000 summer vis¬ 
itors frequent the springs. The largest, 
the Sprudel, gushes up to a height of 
about three feet above the ground. The 
flow of the various springs is estimated 
at about 2,000,000 gallons daily. There 
are over fifty lace factories in the neighbor¬ 
hood. 

Carlsruhe, karls'roo. See Baden. 

Carlyle, kar-111', Thomas ( 1795- 
1881), an eminent man of letters. He 
was born in Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire, 
Scotland. His father was a stone mason, 
known for intelligence and sterling worth. 
Carlyle himself says, “No man of my day 
or hardly any man can have had better 
parents.” Young Thomas was so apt at 
his books that he could not remember the 
time when he was unable to read. He 
attended a nearby academy, taught school, 
and set out on foot for the University of 
Edinburgh. With the aid of oatmeal 
and cheese from home he boarded himself. 
He was an earnest student and a prodigious 
reader, learning more, he afterward claim¬ 
ed, from the university library than from 


his regular studies. “Nay, from the chaos 
of that library,” says he, “I succeeded in 
fishing up more books than had been 
known to the keeper thereof.” He 
studied theology, taught, and studied law, 
but could not tell which he hated worst. 
He became a tutor to two wealthy boys, 
and earned quite a sum of money with 
which he made himself comfortable, and 
assisted the folks at home. 

Carlyle’s likings were for literary work. 
In 1818 he settled down at Edinburgh 
and began writing articles for the various 
reviews. Here he married Jane Welsh, a 
superior woman, who had become inter¬ 
ested in his literary struggles. After re¬ 
siding for a short time in Edinburgh, they 
removed to a small estate belonging to 
Mrs. Carlyle, known as Craigenputtock, 
or the Crag of the Hawks. Here Emer¬ 
son visited him. Two men more unlike 
could not be found. Their friendship, 
however, continued through life. 

Among other pieces of work, Carlyle 
here wrote his famous Essay on Burns. 
He was familiar with his subject and 
wrote in a sympathetic vein. It is jiot 
only his best essay, but the most suitable 
of his writings for young people. In 
1834 he moved to London and settled in 
a suburb called Chelsea, where Mrs. Car¬ 
lyle became noted for little receptions giv¬ 
en to literary people. Carlyle was known 
as the “Sage of Chelsea.” 

Carlyle was a crabbed, bitter, dyspeptic 
man, of inflexible integrity, and unsparing 
in his criticisms. His works are hard to 
read, but are full of good thought. He was 
an earnest advocate of duty, hard work, 
and economy. Like Ruskin and other em¬ 
inent British thinkers, he lacked faith in 
the ability of the common people to regu¬ 
late affairs of state. He preached the doc¬ 
trine that the leaders of society and gov¬ 
ernment ought to be persons of great 
nobility of character, and of unselfishness, 
in whose ability and management the 
people should place implicit confidence. 
His Heroes and Hero Worship, a series 
of short lives of great men, gives his 
ideas on this subject. Another noted 
work is Sartor Resartus, or The Tailor 
Resewed. It is an account of his own 


CARMAN—CARMEL 


early mental experience. His essays cov¬ 
er a wide range of German, English, and 
French subjects. A number are grouped 
under the title of Past and Present. Quite 
in line with Heroes and Hero Worship is 
the Life of Frederick the Great in twelve 
volumes, and Oliver CromwelVs Letters 
and Speeches. A History of the French 
Revolution is one of the most vivid pieces 
of writing in existence. 

In 1866 Carlyle was appointed lord rec¬ 
tor of Edinburgh University, a purely 
honorary position, not requiring residence. 
He weht down to Edinburgh and deliv¬ 
ered a noble inaugural address full of 
power, but was prostrated in the flush of 
new honors by the intelligence that Mrs. 
Carlyle had passed away. During their 
lives she had been a most faithful, tact¬ 
ful, and, we may say, brilliant companion, 
who smoothed away much of his rough¬ 
ness, and to whom he owed no small de¬ 
gree of his success. 

Though dyspeptic, and with a tongue 
that rasped like a file, Carlyle was after 
all tender-hearted. He spent the rest of 
his life in the vain regret that he had 
not been better to his wife while he had 
her. At death, in 1881, his remains were 
conveyed at his request to his native vil¬ 
lage of Ecclefechan. 

Carlyle is not an author easily read, or 
easily understood. Aside from his Es¬ 
say on Burns and Essay on Johnson, he 
is scarcely to be read at all by young 
people; but he is fairly entitled to the 
name of “The censor of the age.” Few 
men, if any, have had greater influence on 
the thought of a century than he. 

SAYINGS. 

A dandy is a clothes-wearing man. 

Silence is as deep as eternity. 

Speech is as shallow as time. 

Literature is the thought of thinking souls. 

The greatest of faults is to be conscious of 

none. 

One life,—a little gleam of time between two 
eternities. 

For one man who can stand prosperity, there 
are one hundred that will stand adversity. 

No mortal has a right to wag his tongue, 
much less to wag his pen, without saying some¬ 
thing. 

Genius is an immense capacity for taking 
trouble. 


Always there is a black spot in our sunshine; 
it is the shadow of ourselves. 

Do the duty that lies nearest thee ! Thy sec¬ 
ond duty will already have becoipe clearer. 

Find out your task; stand to it: the night 
cometh when no man can work. 

SAID OF CARLYLE: 

No literary man of the nineteenth century is 
likely to stand out more distinct, both for flaws 
and genius, to the centuries which will follow. 
—R. H. Hutton. 

Carlyle’s literary style has been loudly and 
justly condemned. It is usually jagged and in¬ 
tricate, a mixture of terse English vocabulary 
with involved German structure of sentence. At 
first it seems like the belching of a volcanic mind; 
but after careful scrutiny it is found to be the 
studied expression of a mighty rhetorician who 
seeks not grace, but vividness; not elegance, but 
power.—Thomas B. Shaw. 

No writer left a deeper impress on the Vic¬ 
torian Age.—F. V. N. Painter. 

Carman, William Bliss (1861-), a 
Canadian poet. He was born at Freder¬ 
icton, New Brunswick. His education 
was received at the universities of Edin¬ 
burgh and Harvard. He studied both law 
and civil engineering. In 1886 he returned 
to Harvard and studied philology and 
English literature. He has done journal¬ 
istic work on New York and Boston pa¬ 
pers and as editor of The Literary World. 
He is the author of many poems. The 
best known volumes are probably the se¬ 
ries entitled Songs from V agabondia, 
More Songs from Vagabondia, and Last 
Songs from Vagabondia. These were 
produced conjointly with Richard Hovey. 
Low Tide on Grand Pre, A Sea Mark, 
Ballads of Lost Haven, Behind the Ar¬ 
ras, and A Winter Holiday are other vol¬ 
umes by Carman. He is also the author 
of many delightful prose essays, descrip¬ 
tive of the homes and haunts of birds and 
wild game. 

Over the shoulders and slopes of the dune 

I saw the white daisies go down to the sea, 
A host in the sunshine, a snowdrift in June, 

The people God sends us to set our hearts free. 

Carmel, a long range of low moun¬ 
tains in northern Palestine terminating at 
the Mediterranean in the promontory of 
Mount Carmel. The brook Kishon fol¬ 
lows the northern foot to the sea. The 
Plain of Sharon is on the south, the Plain 
of Acre on the north. This is the region 
in which the prophet Elijah took refuge 


CARMEN SYLVA—CARNEGIE 


and was fed by the ravens. Mt. Gilboa 
is near the eastern extremity. Mount Car¬ 
mel, overlooking the Bay of Acre, was 
early a resort of hermits. The Carmelites, 
a Roman Catholic order of mendicant 
monks, • took their rise here. See Pales¬ 
tine. 

Carmen Sylva (1843-1916), the pseu¬ 
donym of Elizabeth, Queen of Roumania. 
She was a writer of some note. 

Carnac, a village on the southwestern 
coast of ancient Brittany. It is in the 
modern department of Morbihan, France. 
It may be reached by rail. Population, 
about 3,000. Carnac is famous for pre¬ 
historic remains. It was a seat of the 
Druids. Over 1,100 rude blocks of gran¬ 
ite, some of them upwards of eighteen 
feet in height, stand on a level heath. 
They are arranged in rows and form ave¬ 
nues with a half circle at one end. The 
stones are thought to mark a vast Druid- 
ical open air temple and burying ground, 
*but how people without modern tools 
could quarry and transport these huge 
stones is a marvel. The stones have the 
form of rough obelisks standing on the 
pointed end. Many of these stones were 
used at an early day by the surrounding 
farmers in the construction of stables and 
houses, so that the rows are far from com¬ 
plete. See Stonehenge. 

Carnation, a fragrant flower belonging 
to the pink family. Native to southern 
Europe. It has been cultivated more than 
2,000 years. The Greeks called it dian- 
thus or the divine flower. The name car¬ 
nation refers to its original flesh color, 
which, under modern skill, has been bro¬ 
ken up into white, pink, red, and every 
intermediate hue. Over 500 varieties are 
recognized by florists. Monthly carna¬ 
tions, plants that yield a perpetual supply 
of flowers for florists’ purposes, were orig¬ 
inated by a gardener of Lyons, France, 
about the middle of the nineteenth century. 
Carnations are propagated usually by cut¬ 
tings. Millions of dollars are invested in 
hothouses and grounds devoted to raising 
carnations for the market. See Floricul¬ 
ture. 

Carnegie, kar'ne-gi, Andrew, a Scot- 
tish-American manufacturer and philan¬ 


thropist. He was Dorn at Dunfermline, 
Scotland, November 25, 1837. His fa¬ 
ther, a weaver in a small way, was driven 
out of business by steam competition in 
1848 and emigrated to Alleghany City, 
Pennsylvania. Young Andrew entered 
business as a bobbin boy at twenty cents a 
day. Soon afterward he became a tele¬ 
graph messenger boy and then a telegraph 
operator. His superior skill brought him 
to the notice of Colonel Scott, superintend¬ 
ent of the Pennsylvania Railway, who 
made him superintendent of a railway di¬ 
vision. Mr. Carnegie laid the foundation 
of his fortune by borrowing money and in¬ 
vesting it wisely in a sleeping car system. 
Money made in this way he again invest¬ 
ed in oil lands, which yielded him a hand¬ 
some profit. 

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Col¬ 
onel Scott, his old chief, became assistant 
secretary of war. Pie placed Carnegie in 
charge of the eastern division of military 
railroads and telegraph lines, a position 
which it is needless to say the latter filled 
with ability and integrity. When it be¬ 
came evident that wooden bridges for 
highways and railroads were to be replaced 
very generally by iron ones, Carnegie em¬ 
barked in the business of building iron 
bridge work. From the first he saw the 
desirability of owning and controlling iron 
mines and coal mines, as well as machine 
shops. One step led to another naturally. 
By 1899 the Carnegie Steel Company con¬ 
trolled the iron and steel industry of 
Pennsylvania. In 1901 he retired from 
active business, exchanging his iron inter¬ 
ests for $500,000,000 worth of United 
States Steel Corporation securities. 

“Mr. Carnegie’s withdrawal from ac¬ 
tive business was signalized by a tremen¬ 
dous ‘stock-watering’ operation. As a 
result, all people who use any form of- 
iron-plate, tin or steel, have ever since been 
obliged to pay unduly high prices in or¬ 
der that the Steel Corporation may keep 
up dividends on this extra stock. At the 
same time, it is fair to say that Mr. Car¬ 
negie never followed the example of many 
accumulators of great wealth in defying 
the law and corrupting legislatures and 
judges.” 



CARNEGIE FOUNDATION, HERO FUND 


After a busy, and, we may say, strenuous 
life, Carnegie found himself at liberty to 
carry out his own personal inclinations. 
He built himself a magnificent home, 
known as Skibo Castle, in Scotland. His 
winter residence is in New York. Mr. 
Carnegie keeps open house at Skibo Cas¬ 
tle. Many noted men visit him. Tobacco 
is one of his antipathies. 

Carnegie enjoys an enormous income 
and enjoys as well the pleasure of giving 
it away. Among his benefactions are the 
Carnegie Institute at Pittsburg, a tech¬ 
nological institution of high standing, to 
which he has already given $10,000,000 
and promised $15,000,000. The Carnegie 
Institution at Washington, D. C., has re¬ 
ceived $22,000,000. Mr. Carnegie gave 
$600,000 to the Booker T. Washington in¬ 
dustrial institution for colored people at 
Tuskegee, Alabama. Among European 
gifts was one of $10,000,000 to the uni¬ 
versities of Scotland. In 1913, it was said 
that his benefactions had passed the $200,- 
000,000 mark. 

Carnegie libraries are now well known. 
He has adopted the plan of presenting 
communities with a. sum sufficient to erect 
a library building, on condition that the 
site be furnished and a standing tax for 
the maintenance of the library assured. 
In 1914 there were 2,200 Carnegie Free 
Public Libraries established throughout 
the English-speaking world. From Can¬ 
ada to Tasmania, the gifts had reached a 
total of about $50,000,000. Among the 
larger gifts of this sort are $1,000,000 
each for libraries at St. Louis, Homestead, 
Braddock, and Duquesne; libraries in De¬ 
troit and San Francisco have received 
$750,000 each. So many $5,000, $10,000, 
$20,000, and $50,000 Carnegie libraries 
have been erected in various parts of the 
United States that it is difficult to state 
their number. New York City received 
$3,000,000 for fifty branch libraries. 

See Steel. 

Carnegie Foundation, The, an insti¬ 
tution for the advancement of teaching. 
This institution was founded by Andrew 
Carnegie in 1904. Its purpose is to pro¬ 
vide pensions for retired professors. It 
was the original intention to confine pen¬ 


sions to the undenominational private col¬ 
leges in the English-speaking countries of 
North America. The Foundation is man¬ 
aged by a board of trustees, and by sal-* 
aried officials. The report for the year 
ending September 30, 1908, exhibited 

$10,962,000 on hand, an expense account 
for salaries and otherwise of $39,898, and 
211 retiring allowances in force. The 
average annual allowance was $1,532. 
The total was $303,505. In the year 
named Mr. Carnegie increased his original 
endowment of $10,000,000 to $15,000,000, 
and some sixty tax-supported institutions 
in Canada, Newfoundland, and the Unit¬ 
ed States were accepted. 

The rules covering the grants are sim¬ 
ple. The institution is examined and ac¬ 
cepted. The professors are then entitled 
to pensions as a “matter of right,” and 
are not required to beg for it. Any per¬ 
son sixty-five years of age who has served 
not less than fifteen years as a professor, 
and who draws an active salary of $1,200 
or less, may retire on a yearly pension of 
$1,000; but the allowance is in no case to 
exceed ninety per cent of the salary. For 
each $100 of active salary in excess of 
$1,200, $50 is added to the pension. 
Thus a professor drawing $2,000 a year, 
and otherwise eligible, may retire on a 
pension of $1,400. The maximum pension 
allowance is $4,000. Any person who has 
served twenty-five years may retire regard¬ 
less of age, and may exchange his salary 
for a pension which is reckoned at four- 
fifths of the amount allowed the older per¬ 
son. A widow is entitled to half her hus¬ 
band’s allowance. In case of remarriage 
the pension ceases. The trustees take spe¬ 
cial action in case of physical breakdown. 
Meritorious individuals not in accepted 
institutions may be granted pensions. 

Carnegie Hero Fund, a fund estab¬ 
lished by Andrew Carnegie in 1904 for the 
purpose of rewarding those who perform 
deeds of heroism. Mr. Carnegie states that 
it was not his purpose to increase the num¬ 
ber of such deeds since he believed them to 
be acts of impulse, but that he wished to 
save individuals who had displayed hero¬ 
ism, and their families, from pecuniary 
suffering as a result of injuries received in 


CARNEGIE INSTITUTION—CARNIVORA 


the performance of heroic acts. The fund 
consists of $5,000,000, and is in the hands 
of a commission of twenty-one members. 
•The deed of trust guards against careless 
or injudicious bestowal of funds. Bronze, 
silver, and gold medals are given and the 
amount of money bestowed is governed by 
the extent of injury and the needs of the 
individual. In case no injuries have been 
received the gift of money depends upon 
the hero’s needs. A child or youth is often 
given money in trust for educational pur¬ 
poses. A man or woman is relieved of 
debts, given money toward a home, or for 
the future education of young children. 
The word heroic, is, in the regulations of 
the commission, applied to “acts in which 
conclusive evidence may be obtained show¬ 
ing that the person performing the act vol¬ 
untarily risked his own life in saving or at¬ 
tempting to save the life of a fellow being, 
or who voluntarily has sacrificed himself 
in an heroic manner, for the benefit of 
others.” A report of the commission issued 
January 31, 1910 states that, since the 
establishment of the fund, it has paid out 
to heroes or their families $248,406.54 and 
has presented 13 gold, 148 silver and 175 
bronze medals. The commission receives 
notification of deeds of heroism through 
the press or by letters from friends of the 
hero. Its address is Carnegie Hero Fund 
Commission, Oliver Building, Pittsburg, 
Pennsylvania. 

Carnegie Institution of Washing¬ 
ton, an organization for the encourage¬ 
ment of investigation, research, and discov- 
' ery. It was founded by Andrew Carnegie 
in 1902. He gave the institution $10,000,- 
000 to start with. Later gifts bring the 
total to $22,000,000. It is the intention 
of the institution to encourage original 
investigators by providing funds and facil¬ 
ities necessary to carry on work that or¬ 
dinary institutions of learning cannot af¬ 
ford. The funds are handled by men of 
scholarship and integrity. Ex-President 
Charles W. Eliot of Harvard is a member 
of the board. In 1908 a desert botanical 
laboratory was maintained at Tucson, Ari¬ 
zona ; a station for experimental evolution 
at Cold Spring Harbor, New York; a 
marine biological laboratory at Tortugas, 


Florida; a laboratory at Washington, D. 
C.; a solar observatory on Mount Wilson, 
California; a nutrition laboratory at Har¬ 
vard. A large number of special investi¬ 
gators were granted salaries and were giv¬ 
en funds to be used in connection with 
university departments for research, es¬ 
pecially in history, economics, and sociol¬ 
ogy. An appropriation was made to build 
a non-magnetic sailing vessel for magnet¬ 
ic observations in the Atlantic. Luther 
Burbank was granted a sum sufficient to 
enable him to devote himself entirely to 
experimental work. The publications of 
the institute numbered about 150 volumes 
in 1909. These books are sought eagerly 
in exchange by institutions of learning 
both at home and abroad. They are valu¬ 
able in any line of investigation. 

Carnival, a farewell to meat. A time 
of feasting prior to the forty days of 
Lent, during which abstinence from eat¬ 
ing meat is enjoined. It is observed 
throughout Roman Catholic countries as 
a season of merriment, revelry, feasts, 
dances, operas. In southern Europe much 
of the jollity has been handed down from 
the Bacchanalia, or feasts of Bacchus; and 
in the north, the old Yuletide banquets 
and drinking bouts have shaded off into 
carnival festivities. Whether the newspa¬ 
per and the railroads are the cause or not, 
carnival festivities are not what they for¬ 
merly were. See New Orleans; Mardi 
Gras. 

Carnivora, flesh-eating animals. In 
one sense of the word a mosquito hawk 
is a flesh eater, so is an eagle; but the 
term is restricted to mammals with small 
heads and sharp teeth for seizing and 
rending their prey. Carnivora are of two 
groups. The first includes the seal, wal¬ 
rus, seahorse, etc., which may be regard¬ 
ed as otters with legs changed into swim¬ 
ming flippers. They are very agile in the 
water, but are clumsy and decidedly out 
of their element on the land. Four-leg¬ 
ged carnivora fitted for pursuit of their 
prey and for terrestrial life are divided 
into five families: 

1. The cat family, with five retractile 
claws on each foot,—cat, lion, tiger, 
leopard, etc. 








Spotted hyena. 

CARNIVOROUS ANIMALS 









































































































































































































































CAROLINE ISLANDS—CARPENTER 


2. The dog family, with five non-retract- 

ile claws on each foot,—dog, wolf, 
fox, jackal, etc. 

3. The hyena family, long front legs and 

with non-retractile claws, four toes 
on each foot,—hyena, aardwolf, etc. 

4. The weasel family, with long bodies and 

short legs, usually five toed,—the wea¬ 
sel, marten, mink, skunk, wolverin, 
and badger. 

5. The bear family, with flatfooted (plan¬ 

tigrade) extremities,—the bear, rac¬ 
coon, etc. 

For carnivorous plants, see Venus’ 
Flytrap; Pitcher Plant; Sundew; etc. 

Caroline Islands, a large archipelago 
in the Pacific Ocean, in latitude 3°-12° N., 
and longitude 132°-163° E. There are in 
all about 500 islands in several groups. 
The archipelago was explored by the 
Portuguese in 1527, but was taken over by 
the Spaniards in 1686, and named for 
King Charles II (Latin Carolus). Spain, 
having little interest in her possessions, 
ceded Guam to the United States in 1898, 
and sold the rest of the islands to Ger¬ 
many in 1899 for $3,300,000. Many of 
the islets are mere coral reefs. The in¬ 
habitants, some 30,000 in number, are 
Polynesians not yet advanced, save for 
missionary efforts, beyond the stone age 
of savagery. The chief productions are 
breadfruit, bananas, and dates. See Clam. 

Carolingians, or Carlovingians, a 
royal house of Europe. The name is de¬ 
rived from the Latin word Carolus, or 
Charles, and may be regarded as based 
on Charles Martel or on his grandson, 
Carolus Magnus, better known as Charle¬ 
magne. There were several branches. 
Carolingians ruled in France 752-987; in 
Italy, 774-961 ; and in Germany, 752-911. 
Charlemagne was the greatest of the fam¬ 
ily. Louis, “the Child,” was the last of 
the German Carolingians. Louis V was 
the last of the family to sit on the throne 
of France. 

Carp, fresh-water fishes of the family 
to which the chub, goldfish, dace, sucker, 
red-eye, shiner, and the minnow also be¬ 
long. The common carp is from ten to 
forty inches long, and weighs from one 
to four pounds. It may, in extreme cases, 


weigh fifty pounds. It has been kept in 
fish ponds for centuries in southern 
Europe and is still reared in the carp ponds 
of Germany and Great Britain. About 
1872 efforts were made to establish the 
German carp in American • waters. The 
streams of the Colorado and the Illinois 
River are full of them. About 7,000,000 
pounds of carp are sold in New York 
City. The markets of Cincinnati, Louis¬ 
ville, and St. Louis are supplied with carp, 
sold usually, however, as buffalo fish. As 
compared with our native fishes, the carp 
is decidedly inferior. Its importation, like 
that of the English sparrow, has proved 
entirely too successful. The carp is too 
insipid to be prized as a table fish, and, 
although Walton has something to say of 
the skill requisite to take carp in English 
waters, it is too logy to be a favorite with 
fishermen. Carp have been known to live, 
it is said, upward of 150 years. See Fish. 

Carpathians, kar-pa/thi-ans, a moun¬ 
tain range of Europe. The chain encir¬ 
cles the plains of Hungary for about 800 
miles and forms a natural boundary on the 
northwest. The range is lower than that 
of the Alps, but the plants and animals 
are the same for corresponding altitudes. 
Vineyards and fields are succeeded by for¬ 
ests. The higher part of the ranges is 
above the limit of vegetation. Salt depos¬ 
its of great thickness and mines of gold, 
silver, copper, and iron are found. 

Carpenter, a worker in timber. Origi¬ 
nally the term was connected with the 
making of carriages, but is now applied to 
one who works at the construction of 
wooden buildings, as houses, ships, bridg¬ 
es, and inside woodwork. The occupation 
is one that requires a true eye and hand, 
combined with no small degree of intelli¬ 
gence. Before the day of the sawmill the 
carpenter was obliged, of course, to ob¬ 
tain his own lumber from trees. People 
still living can remember a time when a 
carpenter planed his own lumber for floor¬ 
ing, made his own doors, casings, and 
even window sashes. With the advent of 
planing mills, sash and door factories, and 
machine-made moldings, the house caT- 
penter is relieved of all this work, but it 
can hardly be said that woodwork re- 



CARPET 


quires any less skill. There are about 
600,000 carpenters and joiners in the 
United States, with an average income of 
about $600 per year. 

Carpet, a woven covering for the floor 
or stairway. Carpets are woven usually in 
long strips up to a yard in width. The 
strips are sent to market in large rolls. 
Short lengths are cut off and sewed to¬ 
gether according to the size of the floor 
to be covered. As distinguished from a 
rug, a carpet covers usually the entire 
floor and is fastened down by carpet tacks. 

American carpets are woven by machin¬ 
ery. Three distinct weaves are recognized. 
To understand the difference it is neces¬ 
sary to hold in mind that the parallel 
threads that run lengthwise constitute the 
warp. The threads that run crosswise are 
the weft or woof. The weft and the warp 
woven together form a web. 

The simplest weave is the ingrain car¬ 
pet. It is called sometimes the Scotch 
carpet. Sometimes it is called a Kidder¬ 
minster carpet from the English town of 
that name noted for carpet weaving. An 
ingrain may be two-ply or three-ply. A 
two-ply ingrain is double. It consists of 
two webs, let us say, a brown and a blue 
combined. By passing the threads up or 
down, the webs change sides. Wherever the 
blue web shows on one side, the brown 
web shows on the other. The figures are not 
unlike blisters. The blue web on one side 
and the brown web on the other side may 
be pulled apart. They are connected only 
around the edge of the figure. In the spaces 
between figures the webs may be woven 
together solid. A two-ply ingrain of the 
colors named has a blue pattern on a 
brown ground. Turn it over, and the pat¬ 
tern appears in brown on a blue ground. 
A three-ply ingrain is the combination of 
three webs—three colors. The pattern may 
have great variety and the body of the 
carpet is naturally softer and more dur¬ 
able. In all ingrain the surface threads 
lie flat. The best ingrains are made en¬ 
tirely of wool, though cotton and other 
materials are used to lessen the cost. 

A second kind of carpet is the Brussels. 
It has a rich, corded appearance. It is 
built on a linen w.eb. Worsted threads 


are run in and out lengthwise. These 
threads run over a set of crosswires. The 
wires are afterward pulled out, leaving a 
looped surface. There are usually five se¬ 
ries of woolen threads, each of different 
color. The different colors rise to the 
surface and form the loops or lie in the 
body of the fabric according to the pat¬ 
tern. A standard five-color Brussels car¬ 
pet, twenty-seven inches wide, requires 
2,860 threads. 

The tapestry carpet is a variation of 
the Brussels. Instead of five or six sets 
of differently colored woolen threads, the 
tapestry is woven, loop fashion, with one 
set of threads worked into the linen web. 
The pattern effect is secured by printing 
the thread in lengths, a few inches or feet 
of one color, then a few inches or feet of 
another color. Although each thread is 
of all colors, a single thread gives no idea 
of the pattern. Arranged side by side, 
however, elongated patterns may be seen. 
A pattern nine feet long in the thread is 
shortened to two feet in the looped and 
completed tapestry. The dyeing of the 
threads is accomplished by winding them 
on a drum, side by side, and printing them 
in color. Miles of parallel threads are 
wound up and stained at once. 

The third important weave is the Wil¬ 
ton or Moquette. It differs from the 
Brussels in that the loops are cut before 
the wires are withdrawn. When laid for 
use, the foot presses on the loops of the 
Brussels carpet; but a Wilton carpet pre¬ 
sents the ends of the cut fibers to the 
foot. These carpets are known also as 
pile carpets and velvet carpets. The Ax- 
minster is a pile carpet. 

The first American carpet makers learn¬ 
ed the art chiefly in Axminster, Kidder¬ 
minster, Wilton and other British weaving 
centers. The British had their start from 
France and Belgium. The art may be 
traced backward to Turkey, to Persia, and 
to the East Indies. Aside from home¬ 
made rugs and carpets, the first American 
carpet was made by William Sprague at 
Philadelphia in 1791. It was an Axmin¬ 
ster. Lowell, Massachusetts, became a 
center of carpet weaving. American manu¬ 
facturers have been protected and encour- 


CARPET-BAGGERS—CARRIAGE 


aged by a high tariff on foreign carpets. 
Entire factories, finding their product 
barred from the American market, the best 
carpet market in the world, moved their 
looms and weavers from Scotland and 
England to American soil. The United 
States now leads the world in this manu¬ 
facture. According to the last census 125 
firms were engaged in carpet weaving, 
operating 83,000 power looms, with an 
annual output of approximately 100,000,- 
000 yards, worth $50,000,000 at whole¬ 
sale. Pennsylvania leads the Union in 
carpet weaving. In 1900 over $23,113,058 
worth, or forty-eight per cent of our en¬ 
tire output of carpets, came from the 
looms of that state. 

The old-fashioned rag carpets, once the 
housewife’s pride, are distinctly American. 
They are still made and not infrequently 
in handsome patterns. The Navajo In¬ 
dians, famous also for basketry, weave 
beautiful rugs and blankets in striking 
colors, which have lately attracted atten¬ 
tion and command large prices. 

See Rug; Shawl; Weaving; Navajo. 

Carpet-Baggers, a term of reproach 
applied by the people of the Southern 
States to political adventurers from the 
North. At the close of the Civil War a 
swarm of Northern men, often without 
principle, and usually without property in¬ 
terests, located in the Southern States with 
a view to use the negro vote to secure 
office. These unscrupulous, moneyless of¬ 
ficeholders were not inappropriately dub¬ 
bed “carpet-baggers.” Consult Thomas 
Nelson Page’s Red Rock, a recent novel, 
for a Southern view of the case. 

Carpet-sweeper, an implement for 
sweeping carpets and rugs. It consists of 
a brush set in a case equipped with wheels 
and a handle for operating it. The brush 
is so placed that when the case is pushed 
over the carpet, the brush is caused to 
revolve, gathering dust, lint, etc. into the 
receptacles on either side and confining it 
there until emptied by tne operator. The 
carpet-sweeper will not make a carpet as 
clean as will a good broom, but it gathers 
the dust instead of scattering it, and there¬ 
fore fills a place of importance in the 
economics of the household. 


Carranza, Venustiano, a Mexican gen¬ 
eral and leader. He was born about 1860. 
Carranza as governor of Coahuila, refused 
to recognize the government of General 
Huerta. On March 26th, 1912, Carranza 
was appointed commander in chief of the 
Constitutionalist party. After the retire¬ 
ment of Huerta and the practical elimina¬ 
tion of Villa as a leader his government 
was recognized by the United States in 
1915. 

Carrara, kar-ra'ra, a town of Italy 
situated on a small stream of the Apen¬ 
nines midway from Leghorn to Genoa. It 
is about ten miles from the sea. It is 
noted chiefly for its quarries, now over 
2,000 years old. Carrara marble is a 
pure white, fine, sugar-grained stone long 
celebrated in art. It is the choicest marble 
known. The famous sculptors of Flor¬ 
ence, and indeed of all Europe, were wont 
to work at Carrara to save the expense of 
transporting stone. The city now main¬ 
tains a school of sculpture and is a place 
of some culture. In addition to the pure 
white carrara of the sculptors, the dis¬ 
trict has unlimited cliffs of marble for 
building purposes. The Pantheon of 
Rome and many other famous buildings 
are of Carrara stone. Population 50,000. 

Carriage, a wheeled vehicle designed 
to carry people on ordinary streets and 
roads. Two-wheeled carts or chariots 
were known to the Assyrian and Egyptian. 
It may be remembered that David brought 
home the Ark in a new cart, and that “the 
anger of the Lord was kindled against 
Uzzah and He smote him” for putting 
his unhallowed hand on the Ark when the 
oxen drawing the cart stumbled over 
rough ground. For want of roads in 
former times, four-wheeled carriages were 
comparatively rare. It is believed that 
beyond the rudest sort of peasants’ carts, 
there were not a dozen carriages or coach¬ 
es in all Europe when America was dis¬ 
covered. The bodies of the earlier car¬ 
riages, were hung on straps by way of 
springs. The carriage spring passed 
through several stages. The first attempt 
to relieve the jar of riding was the sus¬ 
pension of the box by leathern straps 
from stiff iron arms or jacks rising in 





CARRIER—CARRIER PIGEON 


front and behind from the axles. Then it 
occurred to some one to give the upper ends 
of the jacks a little spring. The next step 
was to coil the upper ends of the jacks in¬ 
to springs having the shape of the letter 
C. Elliptical steel springs have been in 
use about a century. The very names of 
the various kinds of carriages are bewilder- 
ing. Gig, sulky, and go-cart; chaise, ca¬ 
lash, cariole, coupe, hansom, and jaunting 
car; coach, brougham, barouche, rock- 
away, landau, and victoria; buggy, phae¬ 
ton, and surrey; cab, hackney, fiacre, and 
drosky; drag, carryall, and tally-ho; wag¬ 
onette, barge, stage, and omnibus; dray, 
express wagon, and van; cart, truck, and 
farm wagon,—there is no end to the class¬ 
es, styles, and variations. It is impossible 
to say what further changes may be in¬ 
troduced by the automobile. 

Some idea of the extent to which the 
manufacture of vehicles is carried in the 
United States may be gained from the 
census statistics: 


Number of factories . 7,632 

Capital invested.$118,187,838 

Wage earners . 62,540 

Annual wages . $29,814,911 

Cost of material . $56,676,073 

Wholesale value of products .$121,537,276 


See Wagon; Car; Automobile. 

Carrier, in literature, one who conveys 
parcels. In Dickens’ Cricket on the 
Hearth, the carrier with his cart makes 
daily trips, executing errands and carry¬ 
ing parcels for a small charge. When 
Carlyle was at the University of Edin¬ 
burgh the weekly carrier was entrusted 
with oatmeal, cheese, and clean linen from 
the Annandale home. In Great Britain 
and on the continent the private carrier 
has been superseded by the carts of the 
government parcel post. Scarce a rural 
highway is without its post wagon. The 
postman collects and delivers boxes, pack¬ 
ages, parcels, and baskets, at a nominal 
charge—scarce a fraction of our express 
costs—not to mention the convenience to 
rural sections, such as our private express 
companies do not reach at all. It is 
thought by many that our rural free de¬ 
livery postal routes may develop into a 
parcel post service. 


In law, any individual or company that 
undertakes to carry for pay is called a 
common carrier. A common carrier, as a 
railroad or steamboat, must carry for all 
who can pay the charge, and may be held 
responsible for needless delay or damage 
to goods in transportation. The same 
principles apply to passenger service. 

Carrier Pigeon, a bird of strong flight 
employed to convey messages. Before the 
day of the telegraph and the steam en¬ 
gine, carrier pigeons were much used to 
carry information. The whole secret lies 
in the fondness of the pigeon for its old 
home. If the Rothschilds of London, for 
instance, wished early intelligence of some 
expected event in Paris, they sent pigeons 
from their London loft by a messenger to 
their Paris house, where at the proper time 
a note was written on thin paper and was 
fastened closely around the shin of the 
pigeon’s leg. The pigeon was then re¬ 
leased and flew homeward to his old loft 
with the news still wrapped around his 
leg. Great pains were taken to train 
pigeons by taking them first on a short 
journey, and then farther away from 
home. When a carrier pigeon is released 
with its message, it rises in circles until 
it gets its bearings and then flies straight 
away for its home. Thirty miles an hour 
is an ordinary flight, although a speed of 
ninety miles an hour is on record. If the 
distance be great, the pigeon rests at night. 
If a pigeon be released from a balloon, 
it will drop like a plummet until near 
enough the earth to get its bearings; then 
it homes in a straight course. An Ameri¬ 
can pigeon has been known to fly 1,040 
miles without stopping. 

The use of carrier pigeons reaches back 
into antiquity. Someone has suggested 
that the dove let loose from the ark was 
a carrier pigeon. When an Egyptian king 
was crowned it was customary to let car¬ 
rier pigeons from the various provinces 
fly homeward with the announcement of 
the ceremony. Wealthy Romans carried 
pigeons in baskets into the amphitheater 
for the purpose of sending home the names 
of guests whom they were inviting, or to 
make a change in the dinner. The birds 
rarely failed in their mission. 








CARROLL—CARSON 


Carrier pigeons were employed at the 
siege of Jerusalem. The Saracens made 
frequent use of this means of carrying 
information during the Crusades. During 
the Napoleonic wars, news of great bat¬ 
tles were transmitted by carrier pigeons in 
advance of couriers. During the siege of 
Paris by the Germans in the Franco-Prus¬ 
sian War, the Parisians communicated 
with the outside world by pigeons as well 
as balloons. Military information was 
sent frequently in cipher. Since the inven¬ 
tion of the telegraph the practical value 
of carrier pigeons is trifling, and training 
has degenerated into mere trials of speed. 
It still attracts considerable attention. 
Pigeon homing is a national sport in Bel¬ 
gium and in England. Every year a 
pigeon “Derby” is flown from Nantes, 
France, to Lancashire, England. In the 
event of 1908 7,113 birds were taken 
across the English Channel. They were 
carried in 687 crates and required a train 
of fourteen railway cars. All were liber¬ 
ated at once. The winning bird made the 
trip of 450 miles from Nantes to its Eng¬ 
lish home, and was cooing in the dove¬ 
cote in less than eight hours. 

Consul Henry D. Baker, of Hobart, 
makes the following report on the utiliza¬ 
tion of pigeons in Australia for carrying 
messages from Maatsuyker Island to the 
mainland: 

An experiment of using homing pigeons for 
regular communication and emergency service 
between Hobart and Maatsuyker Island light¬ 
house, about seventy-five miles southwest of Ho¬ 
bart, is meeting with signal success, and was 
the means in November of probably saving the 
life of an assistant at the lighthouse, who was 
able, sixteen hours after sending for a doctor 
by pigeon post, to obtain needed medical relief. 

The pigeon-post service with this lighthouse 
was established by the marine board of Hobart 
on January 21, 1908. The first message, which 
was dispatched from the lighthouse at 10 A. M., 
was received in Hobart at 1:30 p. m. Since that 
time three birds have been liberated with mes¬ 
sages every three weeks, it being also understood 
that if accident or serious illness occurred three 
additional birds were to be set free. Twelve 
birds in all are used for the service. While 
messages have not always reached their destina¬ 
tion safely, generally speaking the service has 
been thoroughly satisfactory. At the present 
time the messages are written on a piece of 
paper tied under the bird’s wing; but the marine 
board has in view some celluloid cases which 


may be adjusted under the bird’s wing and in 
which a good deal of information might be 
written upon “flimsies.” The birds are fed on 
gray peas of good quality, given plenty of grit 
and fresh water, and kept thoroughly clean. 
They are also allowed at their station plenty 
of opportunity for needful exercise. Maatsuy¬ 
ker Island lighthouse is very isolated. It is 
situated seventy-five miles in a direct line from 
Hobart, and by steamer ninety miles. That 
this lighthouse was able to secure a doctor from 
Hobart sixteen hours after one had been sent 
for by pigeon post suggests important possibili¬ 
ties for more general use of pigeons for such 
service. There are 20,000 of these birds in the 
Commonwealth. 

See Pigeon. 

Carroll, Lewis, the pen name of 
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. See Dodg- 

SON. 

Carrot, a well known vegetable. The 
original plant grows wild in Europe and 
northern Asia, but the root is small and 
tough. It was cultivated at an early date 
in Belgium and in France. It is related 
to the parsnip. The -seed stalks are ar¬ 
ranged like the rays of an umbrella, as is 
the case with all plants of the umbellif¬ 
erous family. The carrot of one year 
raises seed the next year. The seeds 
are valuable for medicinal purposes. The 
spindle-shaped root is rich in nitrogen and 
is valued for the table and for cattle. 
Sheep are fond of carrots. Over 2,000,- 
000 bushels a year are raised in the United 
States. Oil of carrot, obtained from the 
root, is used in tanning leather. The car¬ 
rot was brought to Virginia in 1609 
and carrot seed was sown at Plymouth in 
1621. The Indians of New England and 
New York obtained seeds from the white 
people. A cross section of a carrot shows 
an outer ring and a central core. As the 
ring tastes better and is more valuable for 
food, plant breeders are trying to produce 
a variety that shall have a small core or 
even none at all. See Vegetables. 

Carson, Christopher (1808-1868), 
known usually as “Kit” Carson, a cele¬ 
brated American trapper, guide, and sol¬ 
dier. He was born in Madison County, 
Kentucky, December 24, 1808. He died 
at Fort Lynn, Colorado, May 23, 1868. 
When a lad he was set to learn the 
saddler’s trade, but forsook it for a hunt¬ 
ing expedition. He served Fremont as a 


CARSON CITY—CARTHAGE 


guide. In 1847 he was sent to Washing¬ 
ton with dispatches, and received an ap¬ 
pointment as an American scout. In 1853 
he drove a flock of 6,500 sheep overland 
to California. He served for a time as an 
Indian agent in New Mexico. During the 
Civil War he served in the army and was 
made a brigadier-general. Carson City, 
Nevada, was named for him. See Fre¬ 
mont. 

Carson City, the capital of Nevada, six¬ 
teen miles from Lake Tahoe. It is sit¬ 
uated at the base of the Sierra Nevada 
mountains near celebrated mineral hot 
springs. Mining, lumbering, and agricul¬ 
ture are the chief industries. The famous 
Comstock Lode is but eighteen miles away. 
There are railroad and machine shops in 
the town. The state capitol building and 
a U. S. mint are located here. The state 
prison is two miles distant, and a govern¬ 
ment school for Indians is three miles 
south of the city. The population in 1910 
was about 3,600. 

Cart, a two-wheeled vehicle drawn by 
a single animal. The cart is one of the 
most primitive of vehicles. The farm cart 
is a clumsy affair without springs. The 
box may be opened at the rear, and is so 
balanced on a rude hinge that by un¬ 
hooking the front end it may be tipped 
backward to dump the contents. This 
form of a cart has been long in use for 
the conveyance of wood, manure, and for 
other farm work. A cart has never been 
considered a dignified conveyance. In 
London, criminals were conveyed in a 
cart to Tyburn for execution. Minor of¬ 
fenders were tied by the hands to the 
cart’s tail and flogged through the public 
streets. Whittier, it may be remembered, 
speaks of 

Old Floyd Ireson for his hard heart 

Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart 

By the women of Marblehead. 

Of late, however, the term has been 
applied as well to a stylish, light, runabout 
vehicle with springs, intermediate between 
the chaise and the sulky. See Cab; Car¬ 
riage. 

Carte Blanche, cart-blansh', literally 
a white card; hence a blank paper, and 
then an official document duly signed, but 


left to be filled out at the discretion of the 
officer or person to whom it is intrusted. 
1 he term is now used- to designate full 
authority to act. In 1832, for instance, 
a memorable contest was on between the 
House of Commons and the House of 
Lords. The Tory lords refused twice to 
pass a reasonable house bill designed to 
extend suffrage to small householders and 
to reapportion representation in Parlia¬ 
ment. The prime minister struggled with 
King William to secure the appointment 
of enough new lords to carry the bill 
through the upper house. Finally, the 
minister wrote on a scrap of paper which 
the king signed, “The king grants per¬ 
mission to Earl Gray ... to create such a 
number of new peers as will ensure the 
passage of the Reform Bill.” This bit 
of paper, now preserved in the British 
Museum, conferred authority which it was 
not necessary to use. The Tory lords 
stayed away when the bill was next put 
upon its passage, and it became a law. 
Disraeli wrote, “Lord Grey was armed 
with carte blanche 

Carthage, kar'thij, a famous Phoe¬ 
nician colony on the coast of North Africa. 
According to tradition it was founded by 
Queen Dido, who fled from Tyre with her 
followers. She bought as much land of 
the Africans as might be covered by an ox 
hide. In selecting the land the hide was 
cut into a thong, and as much territory 
was claimed as could be surrounded by the 
hide. While without foundation the tra¬ 
dition typifies the dealings of Carthage 
with its neighbors. The date of its found¬ 
ing is given commonly as 878 B. C. Tyre 
and Carthage appear to have been allies. 

Carthage appeared on the scene as one 
of the great Mediterranean powers about 
600 B. C. While Greece was grappling 
with the Persian invasions, Carthage seized 
what seemed a favorable opportunity to 
attack the Creek colonies in Sicily and 
southern Italy. Though unsuccessful, the 
attempt showed an early ambition to be 
supreme in the Mediterranean world. Car¬ 
thage had the finest harbor in North 
Africa, only 100 miles distant from the 
island of Sicily. The city was governed 
by a council, or senate, of 100 rich mer- 


r 


CARTHAGE 


chants. Its army was drawn from the 
Carthaginian provinces,—from Africa, war 
elephants, black Libyans armed with pikes, 
and Numidians, who rode fleet horses, like 
the Cossacks of today. They were dressed 
in the skins of lions, and were armed with 
lances and bows. Bands of Iberians with 
sharp-bladed swords were brought from 
Spain, and companies of half-naked Gauls 
were hired to fight with great two-handed 
swords. From the Balearic Isles they 
drew companies of slingers, who threw 
pebbles or balls of lead. 

The Carthaginians claimed exclusive 
control of the western Mediterranean, and 
ships went as far as the British Isles for 
tin. If the inhabitants of a Mediterra¬ 
nean town permitted a ship from any other 
country to touch for trade they were pun¬ 
ished. If a foreign ship was overtaken, 
its rowers were pitched into the sea and 
the ship confiscated. The Carthaginian 
merchants sent to Tyre for cargoes of 
oriental productions brought by a caravan 
from the far East. Silver they obtained 
from the mines of Spain and Sardinia. 
They had oil and wheat to sell from vast 
African estates, worked by slaves or subject 
people. Their own workmen made jewel¬ 
ry, arms, and idols for the trade. 

Carthage was a proud, powerful, wealthy 
city until it came into conflict with Rome. 
Two such cities as Rome and Carthage 
could not exist as neighbors. A deadly 
grapple followed, lasting 215 years. Car¬ 
thage had the most powerful navy in the 
world, with more money and more men 
than Rome. Three wars followed in 
quick succession. They are called the 
Punic Wars, a shortened term for Phoeni¬ 
cian. The First Punic War lasted from 
364 to 341 B. C. At its beginning the 
Carthaginians declared, “Without our per¬ 
mission, Rome cannot even wash her hands 
in the sea.” Rome, however, built up a 
navy and, after suffering several defeats, 
finally vanquished the Carthaginians and 
laid waste Carthaginian territory in Afri¬ 
ca. As the result of this war, Carthaginian 
supremacy on the Mediterranean was lost. 
Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica passed into 
the hands of the Romans. One scheme 
by which the Romans gained a great ad¬ 


vantage was the invention of a platform 
hinged at one end to the Roman ship, 
something like the drawbridge of a castle. 
Upon approaching a Carthaginian ship 
this drawbridge, filled with armed men 
standing behind their shields, was lowered 
until the outer end rested on a Carthagin¬ 
ian deck, affording the Roman soldiers 
an opportunity to attack at a great advan¬ 
tage. 

The Second Punic War was precipitated 
by the Carthaginians who invaded Italy 
with a large army by way of Spain, France, 
and the north. Hannibal was in com¬ 
mand. He very nearly brought Rome to 
the verge of ruin, but failed to capture 
the largest cities. The Romans under 
Scipio carried the war into Africa, and 
Flannibal was summoned home with his 
army to defend Carthage. The result of 
this war was a complete defeat for Car¬ 
thage. It became, in a way, subject to 
Rome. 

The Romans, however, did not feel safe. 
Cato, the senator, returned from an em¬ 
bassy to Carthage, and exhibited some 
enormous fresh figs that he had brought 
back with him, and declared that they 
were produced but three days’ journey from 
Rome. He dwelt at length upon the 
danger of permitting so powerful an 
enemy to exist, and closed his speech with 
the words, repeated upon every possible 
occasion: “Carthage must be destroyed.” 
With such a sentiment an opportunity 
soon came. It matters not what the ex¬ 
cuse may have been, Carthage was be¬ 
sieged ; walls were built across the en¬ 
trances to the harbors to prevent ships 
from bringing in food; ditches were filled 
up; movable towers and battering rams 
brought into use. The inhabitants were 
half starved, yet defended themselves val¬ 
iantly; women cut off their hair to make 
ropes for the war engines used to hurl 
stones, but Carthage was doomed. Mili¬ 
tary operations began 149 B. C. In the 
spring of 146 B. C. the city was taken in 
an assault lasting seven days. The in¬ 
habitants were put to the sword or sold 
into slavery. The city was set on fire; 
the stone walls were torn down, and the 
very ground plowed up, sprinkled with 


CARTIER—CARVER 


salt, and cursed. The Carthaginian terri¬ 
tories were made a Roman province with 
the capital at Utica. Two hundred years 
later the Romans rebuilt Carthage. It 
was taken by the Vandals and retaken by 
Belisarius. The remains of an enormous 
aqueduct with which he brought water 
from the far distant mountains may still 
be seen. In the early centuries Carthage 
was a center of Christianity, but in 697 the 
city was destroyed by the Arabs. It is 
now but a shapeless ruin, with scarcely a 
name. 

See Hannibal; Fabius; Phoenicia. 

Cartier, kar-tya', Jacques (1494- 
1557 ?), a French navigator. His first voy¬ 
age to the New World was made in 1534, 
when he discovered the St. Lawrence river. 
He reached Newfoundland, discovered the 
straits of Belle Isle, and, landing on the 
mainland of Canada, took possession of 
it in the name of his sovereign, Francis I. 
The next year he sailed up the St. 
Lawrence river to the site of Montreal. 
There he found an Indian village to which 
he gave the name of Mont Royal. In 1541 
he undertook a third expedition, intending 
to found a settlement. He did build a fort 
near the site of Quebec, naming it Charles- 
bourg, but it was soon abandoned. The 
exact date of Cartier’s death is unknown. 

Cartoon, a sketch or drawing on strong 
paper or cardboard to be used as a model 
for large pictures in frescoes, tapestry, 
mosaics, etc. The cartoon is the full size 
intended for the permanent picture and the 
design thus sketched may be transferred to 
the surface to be painted, or it may be 
copied. Cartoons, if by some famous artist, 
may themselves be of value after they have 
served as models. Nine of the twenty-five 
original cartoons painted by Raphael for 
the Vatican tapestries are still in existence, 
and are preserved at the South Kensington 
Museum, London. The term cartoon has 
come to be used to designate a picture or 
sketch of simple outline, intended to ridi¬ 
cule some well-known person, institution, 
habit, or condition. See Caricature ; 
Nast. 

Cartridge, a ready-made charge for a 

gun. In early days, powder, a wad, a 

bullet or shot, and a second wad were 
n-5 


rammed home from the muzzle in succes¬ 
sion. In the earlier cartridges for muzzle 
loading the lead occupied one end of a 
paper cylinder, the powder the other. The 
soldier inserted the cartridge between 
his teeth, tore a hole in the powder end, 
poured the powder into the gun, and then 
rammed lead and paper after it. Modern 
cartridges for breech-loaders are furnished 
with metal and pasteboard shells. A ful¬ 
minating cap is placed in the metal shell, 
so that, on being struck by the hammer, 
a spark discharges the powder. Shells are 
recapped and reloaded. They are described 
in accordance with the amount and kind 
of powder, the amount and size of the lead, 
and the caliber or diameter of the cylinder. 
See Rifle; Ammunition; Gunpowder; 
Sepoy. 

Cartwright, kart'rlt, Peter (1785- 

1872), a famous circuit preacher. He was 
a native of Virginia. He died at Pleasant 
Plains, Illinois. In 1806 he was ordained 
by the Methodist church of Kentucky. He 
was a famous outdoor revivalist, a power 
in the camp meetings for which pioneer 
Kentucky and Illinois were noted. He 
was a man of ready wit, earnest eloquence, 
and sound common sense, but withal some¬ 
what eccentric. On one occasion, it is re¬ 
lated, he came down from the pulpit and 
threshed a rowdy who was disturbing the 
meeting. He then went back to the pul¬ 
pit and finished his discourse. His rough 
and ready ways gave him a strong hold on 
the settlers. He sat in the legislature of 
Illinois. In 1846 Abraham Lincoln de¬ 
feated him in an election for Congress¬ 
man. In his Autobiography he tells us 
that he traveled sixty-five years, baptized 
over 12,000 persons, and preached over 
15,000 sermons. 

Carver, John ( 1576-1621), the first 
governor of Plymouth colony, the first per¬ 
manent English colony in New England. 
He was born in England, but sought 
refuge with other Puritans at Leyden. He 
sailed in the Mayflower for the New 
World and was elected governor before a 
landing was made. His rule was wise, just 
and firm, but very short, for he died four 
months after his arrival. See Plymouth 
Colony. 


CARVER—CARY 


Carver, Jonathan (1732-1780), an 
American explorer. He was a native of 
Stillwater, New York, and died in Lon¬ 
don. In 1756 he commanded a company 
of colonial rangers in the invasion of Can¬ 
ada. On the conclusion of peace he ob¬ 
tained a halfway commission to explore 
the vast territory lying west of the Great 
Lakes. In 1766 he set out from Boston. 
He traveled by way of Mackinaw and 
struck westward to the Mississippi at 
Prairie du Chien. He visited the Falls 
of St. Anthony, bargained with the natives, 
it is said, for a grant of land where St. 
Paul now stands, and explored the north¬ 
ern border of Lake Superior. In 1768 he 
returned to Boston and soon set sail for 
England to lay his charts and reports be¬ 
fore the authorities, by whom he hoped 
to be recompensed for his outlay. In this 
he was disappointed. The lords commis¬ 
sioners required his charts, but gave him 
no money. In 1778, while earning a liv¬ 
ing as a clerk, he managed to bring out an 
edition at Boston of his Travels Through 
the Interior Parts of North America. It 
is an interesting account of the country 
and the manners, customs, ceremonies, 
dress, languages, and mode of living of 
of the Indians he had seen. Grave doubt 
has been thrown on the truthfulness of 
the writer. Some of the most interesting 
parts of his account were taken evidently 
from the narrative of an earlier French 
traveler. Carver’s Cave, as it is called, 
may be seen in a sandstone cliff at St. 
Paul. John C. Fremont and other dis¬ 
tinguished frontiersmen carved their ini¬ 
tials on its walls. It was here that Car¬ 
ver witnessed the burial ceremony of a 
Sioux chieftain. His account of the ad¬ 
dress given by a warrior was made the 
basis of a poem by the German Schiller. 

Carving, a branch of sculpture from 
which it is distinguished by the use of 
soft material, as ivory and wood. A walk- 
•ingstick with a carved ivory head was an 
indispensable part of the equipment of a 
Babylonian gentleman. The Greeks em¬ 
ployed carved ivory in the construction of 
their statues and colossal gods. The re¬ 
mains of early Christian art, whether in 
ivory or wood, are richly carved. The 


finest specimens of woodcarving, however, 
are to be found in the altar work, pews, 
doors, chairs, tables, and halls of the medi¬ 
eval churches, and in the homes of the 
merchant princes. Ravenna, Prague, Nu¬ 
remberg, Augsburg, Antwerp, Bruges, and, 
generally speaking, the cathedral towns 
and the cities of the Hanseatic League 
have richly carved woodwork. Oak carv¬ 
ings are a feature of the stairways, halls, 
and pews and altar work of old English 
houses and churches. Westminster Abbey 
possesses some fine carvings, both medie¬ 
val and modern. Germany has ever ex¬ 
celled in this branch of art. The Black 
Forest region still maintains its reputa¬ 
tion for carved work of artistic merit, as 
well as for toys, parlor and hall orna¬ 
ments, and for clock work. The establish-' 
ment of manual training schools bids fair 
to create a revival of interest in wood work 
of this sort. See Sculpture. 

Cary, ka'ri, Alice and Phoebe , Amer¬ 
ican poets. They" were the children of a 
plain farmer near Cincinnati. Alice was 
born April 26, 1820; Phoebe, September 
4, 1824. They were educated in the dis¬ 
trict school. Alice was tender and sad; 
Phoebe, witty and joyous. Their mother 
died while they were young. They did the 
housework together and began writing 
poetry and articles for such magazines as 
would accept their contributions. Whit¬ 
tier gave them much encouragement. In 
1849 a volume of their poems was pub¬ 
lished. The next year Alice went to New 
York to live, and sent for Phoebe a few 
months later. Money began to come in 
from their writings. Soon they were able 
to move into a pretty little house where 
the literary people of the city, including 
Horace Greeley, a staunch friend, were 
quite in the habit of dropping in for an 
evening, or at a weekly reception. Both 
sisters died in 1871, Alice first, and were 
buried in Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn. 
In life and in death the sisters were in¬ 
separable; their poems are published to¬ 
gether in a single volume. Instead of 
trying to tell the good they did, and in¬ 
stead of giving the names of their chief 
poems, we take the space for a quotation 
from each, and a quotation from a poem 


CARYATID—CASHEW 


by Whittier written on the occasion of 
Alice’s death: 

With hand on the spade, and heart in the sky. 
Dress the ground and till it; 

Turn in the little seed, brown and dry, 

Turn out the golden millet. 

Work, and your house shall be duly fed; 

Work, and rest shall be won ; 

I hold that a man had better be dead 
Than alive, when his work is done. 

—Alice Cary, Work. 

One sweetly solemn thought 
Comes to me o’er and o’er; 

I am nearer home today 

Than I ever have been before; 

Nearer my Father’s house. 

Where the many mansions be; 

Nearer the great white throne, 

Nearer the crystal sea; 

Nearer the bound of life, 

Where we lay our burdens down; 

Nearer leaving the cross, 

Nearer gaining the crown! 

—Phoebe Cary, Nearer Home. 

Unseen of her, her fair fame grew, 

The good she did she rarely knew; 
Unguessed of her in life, the love 
That rained its tears her grave above. 

—Whittier, The Singer. 

Caryatid, kar-i-at'id, a figure of a 
woman in long robes taking the place of 
a column in architecture. The Greek 
plural, the Caryatides, is the name of a 
remarkable series of six marble figures of 
this sort employed to uphold the roof of 
the porch of a temple adjoining the Par¬ 
thenon in Athens. Just what motive the 
Greeks had in employing female figures is 
not known. It has been suggested that 
they represent slaves taken in war; but 
the grace and dignity of these sculptured 
forms precludes the thought of their being 
introduced as a mark of subjection or 
slavery. They are about seven feet in 
height. The originals still stand, and 
form one of the most beautiful portions 
of the remarkable ruins on the Acropolis. 
The use of caryatides was not uncommon in 
Greece and Rome. Male figures used 
for the same purpose were called atlantes. 

Casabianca, ka-sa-be-an'ka, Louis, 
a French naval officer. He was captain of 
the flagship L’Orient in the battle of the 
Nile, August 1, 1798. He was mortally 
wounded and his ship caught fire, but 
his little nine year old son would not 
leave the ship without a permission that 


his dying father could not give. The ship 
exploded and both were lost. Mrs. Hem- 
ans has celebrated the bravery and obedi¬ 
ence of the little fellow in a well known 
poem beginning, 

The boy stood on the burning deck 

Whence all but him had fled. 

Cascade Mountains, a range of western 
mountains. The Cascades run parallel to 
the Pacific coast from California north¬ 
ward into Alaska. In British Columbia 
and Alaska the Cascades crowd the Coast 
Range off into the sea. The line of ele¬ 
vation is marked by a number of moun¬ 
tains of volcanic origin. Wrangel, St. 
Elias, Logan, Fairweather, Vancouver, 
Shasta, Tacoma or Rainier, Adams, and 
Hood are the most noted peaks. The 
range is cut by river gorges, notably by 
that of the Columbia. The Great North¬ 
ern Railway crosses the summit in Wash¬ 
ington by means of the Cascade Tunnel. 
This tunnel is wide enough for a double 
track and is twenty-one feet six inches 
high. It is faced with concrete and is 2.6 
miles long. 

Cash, a foreigner’s name for the copper 
coin of China. These coins are thinner 
and smaller than our cent and are provided 
with a large square hole in the center by 
means of which they are tied up in bunches 
like beads on a string. A single cash is 
worth rather less than a tenth of a cent. 
The small value of the coin is in keep¬ 
ing with prevalent wages and with the 
small parcels in which articles of food 
are sold at retail in China. See Coin. 

Cashew, ka-shoo', a small, spreading, 
tropical tree. It is native to the West In¬ 
dies. The cashew is an excellent example 
of a tropical plant put to many uses of 
which people in a north temperate cli¬ 
mate have little knowledge, and in which 
they cannot be expected to take a special 
interest. The cashew nut is a kidney¬ 
shaped bean an inch in length. It has a 
pleasant, oily taste, and is used as an ar¬ 
ticle of food, either raw or roasted. A 
sweet oil, pressed from the kernels, is used 
like olive oil for cooking. The fruit stalk, 
corresponding to the stem of a cherry, is 
swollen and fleshy like a pear in shape, and 


CASHMERE—CASHMERE GOAT 


is eaten as a cashew apple. A kind of 
wine is made from its juice. The roasted 
nuts are used to flavor cocoa in the man¬ 
ufacture of chocolate. The acrid vapor 
which escapes in roasting is likely to cause 
erysipelas. A gum similar to gum arabic 
exudes from the bark of the tree. 

Cashmere, the northernmost principali¬ 
ty of India. It lies directly west of the 
Himalaya Mountains, and includes the up¬ 
per windings of the Indus River. The 
Vale of Cashmere, which gives its name 
to the province, is a beautiful valley cele¬ 
brated in oriental literature, but better 
known in modern times as the home of the 
goat from whose wool, or hair, the fa¬ 
mous Cashmere shawl is made. The whole 
principality has a population of 3,000,000. 
The Vale of Cashmere has an area of 4,000 
square miles. It is surrounded by beauti¬ 
ful scenery and snow-capped peaks, whose 
splendor and sublimity are said to be be¬ 
yond description. The valley is about 5,000 
feet above the sea. It is well watered, and 
is blessed with an abundance, which, to¬ 
gether with its natural beauty, makes it 
the “Paradise of India.” Forests, fields, 
and rice plantations, rich orchards and 
vineyards, mulberry trees raised for the 
production of silkworms, violets, roses, 
and jasmines are abundant on every hand. 
About one-third of the inhabitants are 
Hindus; the rest are Mohammedans. The 
province is not, however, very prosperous. 
Its few manufactures, especially that of 
the Cashmere shawl, are declining. The 
towns are dirty and the inhabitants un¬ 
progressive. Some improvements, it is as¬ 
serted, have been introduced by the 
British government. A railway has been 
extended into the province from the south. 
Improved methods of agriculture are also 
in process of introduction. 

Cashmere, a variety of light weight, 
fine twilled, woolen dress goods. It is 
dyed in plain colors. It is soft and fine, 
and of pleasing appearance. A fine wool 
material made from the wool of the Cash- 
mere goat was imported into England in 
1820. The cashmere known at the pres¬ 
ent time is one of the many imitations of 
this cloth, which, in turn, was an imita¬ 
tion of the plain portions of the famous 


Cashmere shawls. The chief peculiarity in 
the weaving of cashmere is that it is 
made of a “single” warp. This means that 
the yarn forming the warp is composed of 
one fine, single thread instead of two or 
more threads twisted together as one. In 
order to stand the strain put upon it, this 
“single” thread of cashmere must be of 
the best raw material, tightly twisted. It 
is run through a solution called sizing, 
which adds strength, just as a string might 
be made stronger by dipping it in muci¬ 
lage or varnish. Cashmere is made up 
usually “in the gray” or natural color. It 
is held in stock, and is dyed only to fill 
orders and in such colors as happen to be 
fashionable. A cheaper grade of cashmere 
is made with cotton warp, but it is less 
durable, and the colors are less permanent. 
A well made cashmere is one of the most 
serviceable dress materials ever manufac¬ 
tured. Its beauty lies in the evenness of 
the weave, and its soft draping qualities. 
It may be washed as easily as cotton. 

Cashmere Goat, a variety of the com¬ 
mon goat found in the mountainous re¬ 
gions of Tibet and the Indian principality 
of Cashmere. Its natural food consists of 
twigs, buds, and heather. The farther up 
the mountains, the finer and softer the 
wool, and the deeper its color. The latter 
varies from an ochre, well up the moun¬ 
tains, to pure white, far down in the val¬ 
leys. A thick body of fine, curly wool 
lies next the skin, beneath long outside 
hairs. A full grown goat yields about 
one-half pound of fine wool. It is worth 
from $9 to $12 a pound. The wool of 
from six to ten goats is required for a 
Cashmere shawl, according to its weight. 
Genuine Cashmere shawls made from the 
wool of the Cashmere goat in the Vale of 
Cashmere are rare. In America genuine 
Cashmeres are worth from $70' to $1,500. 
The hair is spun and dyed by women. 
The shawls are woven on rude hand looms, 
but are fine, and involve such intricate pat¬ 
terns that the time of two or three weavers 
is required for a year to produce a single 
shawl. A careful investigation would 
show that these shawls are woven in strips 
which are sewed together with great skill. 
Several thousand hand looms are in opera- 


CASHMERE SHAWL—CASS 


tion; but a large amount of wool is im¬ 
ported from other districts, so that a large 
part of the actual output of the Vale of 
Cashmere is far from genuine. See Rug; 
Shawl. 

Cashmere Shawl, a fine woolen shawl 
made originally in India. The genuine 
shawl was for centuries one of the most 
costly and highly prized articles of com¬ 
merce. Three thousand dollars has been 
paid for a single shawl, although it is 
claimed that few, if any, of the best speci¬ 
mens leave India. These shawls are made 
from the fine, downy wool found about 
the roots of the hair of the wild goats 
of Tibet and the Himalayas. They have 
been made, it is believed, for 4,000 years. 
The down is separated from the coarse 
wool, and is spun by hand. The fiber 
is so short that spinning is a work of dif¬ 
ficulty. The weaving is done in a rude 
hand loom; three or four men sometimes 
working for a year to produce one shawl. 
This tedious process, and the fact that the 
Cashmere goat has not been reared success¬ 
fully outside of Tibet, account for the 
costliness of these shawls. They are made 
in several styles. Some are wholly of one 
piece and are dyed in a solid color. Others 
are made of small strips or squares set 
together with marvelous skill. Either style 
may be embroidered. Cashmere shawls 
have been imitated in many places. The 
most famous imitations are the Broche 
(bro-sha/) shawls of France and the 
Paisley shawls of Scotland. Cashmere 
shawls have been called erroneously cam¬ 
el’s hair shawls, from the popular belief 
that they were made of camel’s hair. The 
plain Cashmere shawls are called chudders 
or chuddahs in Europe and America. See 
Cashmere; Cashmere Goat; Shawl. 

Caspian Sea, the largest lake in the 
world, not fresh water. It lies on the 
borderland between Europe and Asia. Its 
greatest length from north to south is 730 
miles; its greatest width, 270 miles; its 
area, about 170,000 square miles, nearly 
twice that of the American Great Lakes 
combined. The surface is 85 feet below 
that of the ocean. The water is less salt 
than that of the ocean, but is yellow in 
color, and exceedingly bitter. It is, of 


course, without an outlet, but has a num¬ 
ber of tributaries, including the Volga, the 
largest river in Europe. Rapid evapora¬ 
tion prevents the water from rising. There 
are valuable fisheries, including those of 
carp, perch, trout, and especially stur¬ 
geon. Porpoises, seals, and tortoises are 
taken on the northern coast. A fleet of 
fishing and merchant ships finds shelter in 
the various harbors. Baku, at the western 
end, is celebrated for petroleum oil; As¬ 
trakhan, on the Volga near its mouth, is 
the principal Caspian port. Portions of 
the sea are very deep, possibly over 3,000 
feet, but numerous shallows prevent the 
employment of vessels having draft to ex¬ 
ceed ten feet. See Asia; Volga; Baku. 

Cass, Lewis (1782-1866), an Ameri¬ 
can statesman. He was born at Exeter, 
New Hampshire. He entered the practice 
of law in Zanesville, Ohio. He became a 
brigadier-general in the War of 1812, and 
was at the battle of the Thames. In 1831 
he was appointed governor of Michigan 
territory, then extending to the headwaters 
of the Mississippi River. In this position 
he showed no little ability in handling the 
Indian questions of the Northwest. Sub¬ 
sequently he published a volume entitled 
Inquiries Concerning the Indians. A mag¬ 
nificent body of water in northern Minne¬ 
sota is known as Cass Lake. General Cass 
was appointed secretary of war under 
Jackson, and in 1836 was sent as min¬ 
ister plenipotentiary to Paris. Later he be¬ 
came senator from Michigan and was sec¬ 
retary of state in Buchanan’s cabinet. In 
1848 he ran for the presidency, but was 
defeated by General Taylor. An echo of 
the campaign may still be heard in the 
Bigelow Papers. 

Gineral C. is a dreffle smart man ; 

He’s ben on all sides that give places or pelf; 
But consistency still wuz a part of his plan, 

He’s ben true to one party,—an’ thet is himself; 
So John P 
Robinson he 

Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C. 

Gineral C. he goes in fer the war; 

He don’t vally principle more’n an old cud; 

Wut did God make us raytional creeturs fer, 

But glory an’ gunpowder, plunder an’ blood? 

So John P. 

Robinson he 

Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C. 


/ 


CASSANDRA—CASSIOPEIA 


Cassan'dra, in Greek legend the fair¬ 
est princess of Troy. She was the daugh¬ 
ter of Priam and Hecuba, consequently the 
sister of Hector and of Paris, whose theft 
of Grecian Helen brought the war upon 
the Trojan city. According to one legend, 
Cassandra and her twin sister were left 
overnight on a couch of laurel in the 
temple of Apollo. In the morning the sis¬ 
ters were found with two serpents licking 
their ears. As a consequence, Cassandra 
was gifted with such acuteness of ear 
that she could hear the conversation of 
the gods, and was able to prophesy. She 
foretold the fall of Troy and protested 
frantically against the admission of the 
wooden horse within its walls; but Apol¬ 
lo, whose advances she had repulsed, was 
angry and caused her protests to be made 
in vain. At the fall of the city, she fled 
to the temple of Minerva, but was torn 
away and abused by Ajax. She was tak¬ 
en to Greece as one of the slaves of Aga¬ 
memnon, and was put to death by his wife, 
Clytemnestra. Cassandra was a favorite 
subject with ancient poets and sculptors. 
Modern writers also have found material 
in her story. She appears in Shake¬ 
speare’s Troilus and Cressida. In Schil¬ 
ler’s poem, Cassandra, the prophetess is 
represented as bewailing her fate in not 
being believed. 

And men my prophet wail deride! 

The solemn sorrow dies in scorn; 

And lonely in the waste, I hide 

The tortured heart that would forewarn. 

Amid the happy, unregarded, 

Mock’d by their fearful joy, I trod; 

Oh, dark to me the lot awarded, 

Thou evil Pythian God! 

Thine oracle, in vain to be, 

Oh, wherefore am I thus consigned, 

With eyes that every truth must see, 

Lone in the city of the blind? 

Cursed with the anguish of a power 
To view the fates I may not thrall 

The hovering tempest still must lower, 

The horror must befall! 

Those who foresee and predict the downfall, 
meet the fate of Cassandra .—The Times. 

Cassava, kas'sa-va. See Tapioca. 

Cassia, kash'a. See Senna. 

Cassimere, kas'si-mer, a general term 
employed to designate a large class of 
woolen fabrics used for men’s clothing. 


They are woven plain, twilled, and in a 
variety of fancy effects. The yarns are 
spun from wool prepared by the carding 
process. The patterns are produced in the 
loom and are usually plaids, checks, and 
stripes in quiet colors. The quality of 
cassimere differs greatly. It is made some¬ 
times with a cotton warp and wool or 
shoddy weft. This is called union cassi¬ 
mere. It has been estimated that fully 
one-half of the men’s ready-made clothing 
produced in the United States is of cassi¬ 
mere. 

Cassiopeia, kas-i-6-pe'ya, in Grecian 
mythology, an Ethiopean queen, wife of 
Cepheus and mother of Andromeda. Cas¬ 
siopeia was so proud of her daughter’s 
beauty that she boasted that it surpassed 
that of the Nereids or sea-nymphs. The 
incensed nymphs begged Poseidon for ven¬ 
geance. In response to their prayer a 
deluge laid waste the dominions of Ce¬ 
pheus, and a fearful monster appeared 
on the coast to still further ravage the 
country. Cepheus, inquiring of the oracle, 
learned that only the sacrifice of the beau¬ 
tiful Andromeda would appease the wrath 
of the ocean dwellers. Andromeda, there¬ 
fore, was chained to a rock on the sea- 
coast to be devoured by the monster. 
While awaiting her horrible fate, she was 
seen by Perseus, flying homeward with 
Hermes’ winged shoes, and carrying Me¬ 
dusa’s head. Perseus dropped to earth, 
learned the troubles of Andromeda, slew 
the monster, and married the maiden. For 
a time the sea nymphs ceased to harass 
Cassiopeia. At her death, however, she 
was given a place among the stars, which 
angered them anew. Their only recourse 
was to cause her position in the heavens 
to be such that in revolving about the pole 
star, she should hang head downward half 
the time. This, perhaps, to teach her hu¬ 
mility. The constellation Cassiopeia is 
known as the Lady in her Chair. In charts 
of the constellations she is represented as 
a draped figure reclining in a chair and 
holding up both arms. There are fifty- 
five stars in the constellation, five of 
which, forming a capital W, are of the 
third magnitude. A new star appeared in 
the constellation in 1572. For a time it 


CASSIQUIARI—CASTELAR 


shone as brightly as Venus, then disappear¬ 
ed, and has not been identified since. 

That starred Ethiope Queen that strove 

To set her beauty’s praise above 

The sea-nymphs, and their powers offended. 

—Milton. 

Cassiquiari, kas-se-ke-a're, a unique 
river of Venezuela. It branches off from 
the upper Orinoco, taking nearly half of 
the water of that stream, and flows wester¬ 
ly over 100 miles into the Rio Negro, one 
of the main tributaries of the Amazon. 
The Cassiquiari is a deep, rapid, navigable 
stream. With the Rio Negro it forms a 
continuous waterway between the Amazon 
and the Orinoco. See Amazon ; Orinoco. 

Cassock, the tight-fitting coat worn 
under the gown or surplice by clergymen. 
In the Catholic church the cassock of the 
priest is black; that of the bishop is pur¬ 
ple; of the cardinal, scarlet; and of the 
pope, white. The name was applied for¬ 
merly to a loose, outer gown worn over 
other garments. 

Cassowary, a genus of large birds re¬ 
sembling the emu and the ostrich. There 
are several species, found chiefly in New 
Guinea, Australia, and intermediate is¬ 
lands. The common helmeted cassowary 
stands five feet high. It has a crested 
head and a bare, wattled neck of a deep 
blue and fiery red color, set off by a large, 
yellow eye an inch in diameter. The body 
is draped with soft, dark, hairy plumes 
from three to fourteen inches long. The 
wings are short, almost abortive, but are 
armed with five stiff quills with which it 
can strike a dangerous blow. The body 
and legs are stout. A strong foot is divid¬ 
ed into three toes each armed with a stout 
claw, the largest, that of the inner toe, 
being three and one-half inches in length. 
The cassowary runs with swift bounds, far 
outstripping a horse, but, unlike the os¬ 
trich, it receives no aid from its reduced 
wings. It lives in the forests and parks on 
fruits, seeds, and the eggs of other birds. 
Its own eggs are green. Those of the 
largest species are from three to five 
inches in diameter. They are left in a nest 
on the ground to hatch, it is said, in the 
heat of the sun. The birds may be tamed 
or domesticated. See Ostrich ; Emu. 


Cast, a term applied by artists to an 
impression taken by means of wax or plas¬ 
ter of Paris, of a coin, bust, statue, face, 
or any other model. Powdered plaster of 
Paris is mixed ihto a paste, spread on the 
surface of the model, and suffered to hard¬ 
en to form a mold. It is then removed, 
dried thoroughly, and hardened with lin¬ 
seed oil. It may be made in two or more 
sections, the edges of which should be fit¬ 
ted carefully together. The mold is then 
filled with plaster of Paris which repro¬ 
duces the features of the original model. 
In case of a living face, the eyebrows and 
hair are first anointed with sweet oil to 
prevent adhering, and pasteboard tubes 
are inserted in the nostrils to allow the 
model to breathe. Plaster casts may be 
hardened with soap, white wax, rosin, and 
linseed oil until they resemble marble in 
appearance and are able to withstand wash¬ 
ing to remove dust and grime. See Sculp¬ 
ture; Casting; Bell. 

Castanets, a pair of wooden rattles. 
The name is derived from castania, the 
Latin name for chestnut, from the wood 
of which castanets are not infrequently 
made. Castanets are shaped not unlike 
the two halves of an oyster shell, only they 
are shallower, and more nearly circular. 
They are tied together loosely by a string 
and hung over the thumb, so that they fall 
within the palm of the hand. When the 
hand is shaken the castanets strike against 
the half closed fingers making a tremulous 
sound. They are played as an accompani¬ 
ment to the guitar or to mark the time of 
dancers. It is supposed that their use was 
introduced by the Moors. They are still 
in favor among the peasants of Portugal, 
Spain, and southwestern France. More 
out of curiosity they have been introduced 
into English-speaking countries for con¬ 
certs and the like. 

Caste. See Brahmans ; India. 

Castelar, Emilio (1832-1899), a Span¬ 
ish statesman. A native of Cadiz. He 
studied at the University of Madrid and 
became a professor of history in that in¬ 
stitution. He was a frequent contributor 
to various periodicals. At the age of thir¬ 
ty-two he established La Democracia, a 
popular journal devoted, as may be infer- 


CASTELAR 


red from the name, to the advance of dem¬ 
ocratic ideas. The period was one of mil¬ 
itary uprisings, of “government by revolt.” 
Ferdinand VII, a suspicious, treacherous, 
absolute monarch, died in 1833. The Ab¬ 
solute party desired to crown Carlos, a 
brother of the dead king. The Carlists, as 
this party was called, were opposed by 
those in favor of a constitution. The 
crown was settled on Isabella, a young 
daughter of Ferdinand, under the regency 
of her mother, Christina, who proclaimed 
a paper constitution. Carlos and the 
Carlist leaders were driven out in 1840; 
but meanwhile the Constitutionists divided 
into Moderates and Progressionists and 
fell to blows. Christina sided with the 
Moderate party and was forced to abdicate. 
One military uprising followed another. 
Any officer who had the troops and a griev¬ 
ance might issue a proclamation and find 
himself in flight or in charge of the young 
queen’s government, as the event might 
turn out. These revolutions were little 
more than armed changes of ministry. 
There was noise and bluster, but little 
bloodshed. The common people went on 
planting and harvesting, reaping their lit¬ 
tle patches of grain, pulling the flax and 
hemp, gathering oranges and hazelnuts, 
pressing wine, and shearing sheep, quite in¬ 
different to the cockade that rode foremost, 
provided they could pay their taxes and 
keep bread in the mouths of their children. 
Forty years of this kind of government 
went on. Isabella grew up worthless; 
elections were a farce. As a journalist 
and public speaker, Castelar strove man¬ 
fully to bring order out of chaos. His is 
the one patriotic voice to be heard above 
the din of selfish strife. 

In 1866 Castelar was concerned in an 
uprising, not against the ministry, but 
against monarchy, and was compelled to 
flee to England under sentence of death. 
Two years later Isabella fled, and Castel¬ 
ar returned. Castelar labored to pro¬ 
claim a republic, but the supporters of 
monarchy won in the Cortes and finally 
the crown was accepted in 1871 by Ama- 
deo, a younger son of Victor Emmanuel of 
Italy. Two years later the young king 
gave up in despair, and Castelar became 


the president of a new republic. The con¬ 
stitution was much like that in vogue else¬ 
where. Castile, Aragon, and the other 
ancient provinces were constituted states; 
but the people proved unfit for self gov¬ 
ernment. It had been the dream of Castel¬ 
ar, the student, and Castelar, the writer, 
and Castelar, the speaker, and Castelar, 
the revolutionist, and Castelar, the legis¬ 
lator, to give Spain an enlightened demo¬ 
cratic government; but Castelar, the presi¬ 
dent, could not convert the ignorance of 
centuries into intelligence, nor the official 
selfishness and dishonesty of misrule for 
generations into a progressive and upright 
administration. He encountered an emp¬ 
ty treasury, a demoralized army, officers in 
mutiny, seaboard cities refusing to comply 
with national legislation, Carlist uprisings 
in the north and municipal uprisings in the 
south, hordes of ruffians in the cities, and 
bands of bandits in the mountains. 

Castelar was forced to abandon theory 
for practical measures. He saw that “the 
choice lay between bayonet rule in the 
hands of disciplined troops controlled by 
good men, and pike rule in the hands of 
a vicious rabble led by escaped galley- 
slaves.” During a recess of the Cortes, 
Castelar made himself dictator. He drove 
out the Carlists, subdued the cities, and 
sent criminals to the gallows by the short 
route of drumhead courts-martial. When 
the Cortes reassembled, a resolution of cen¬ 
sure was passed. Castelar might have 
turned the legislators out at the point of 
the bayonet, but he had no personal desire 
for authority. He resigned promptly. He 
became a member of the Cortes, rising 
often from his seat to speak with all his 
old time eloquence. Castelar is admitted¬ 
ly the Spaniard of his century. His chief 
writings are History of the Republican 
Movement in Europe, Civilization, and 
Questions, Political and. Social. 

Castelar was well aware that he had 
not seen all his hopes bear fruit but he 
was well content. Toward the close of his 
life he wrote: “When we turn the eyes 
of our memory to the sad realities of the 
past, and compare them with the realities 
of the present, we see what may be ac¬ 
complished without the fulfillment of 


CASTILE—CASTLE 


Utopian dreams and unrealizable ideals. 
1 hose who have seen an almost absolute 
monarchy may today see a democratic mon¬ 
archy. Those who once scarcely dared 
to express their thoughts, today may write 
whatever they think proper. Those who 
once were excluded from the universities 
for proclaiming free thought and the prop¬ 
er standards of science, today have a right 
to teach what they think and believe. 
Those who once felt their hearts stirred 
with indignation against slavery and the 
markets where human beings were bought 
and sold, as in Nineveh and Babylon, now 
know that today there is not one slave un¬ 
der the Spanish flag. We may well feel 
content with the work of the past forty 
years.” 

Castile, kas-tel', a former kingdom in 
the central part of Spain. For a long 
time it was a frontier state,—a line of 
castles, as the name implies, against the 
Moors. By the marriage of its queen, Is¬ 
abella, with Ferdinand, king of Aragon, 
in 1469, the crowns of Castile and Ara¬ 
gon were united. From this union sprang 
the modern kingdom of Spain. See Moors ; 
Spain; Aragon. 

Casting, the running of melted metal 
in a mold so as to produce a piece of metal 
having a desired shape. Casting is to 
be distinguished from stamping. Coins, 
for instance, are struck out of a sheet of 
metal by a heavy punch, and pressed into 
form by a die. Casting is done for the 
most part in foundries. Small castings 
may be made in trays of sand; but for 
castings of size a bed of sand, often many 
feet deep, is spread over the floor of the 
casting room. Casting sand is fine, free 
from gravel, and has a faculty of retain¬ 
ing an impression as of a footprint. It 
must be dried out thoroughly to prevent 
an explosion through the sudden formation 
of steam when hot metal is poured into it. 

In order to make a casting it is necessa¬ 
ry, first of all, to have a pattern, usually of 
wood, the exact size and shape of the de¬ 
sired object, from which to form a mold. 
In case of a pattern of plain form, it is 
thrust simply into the sand bed. The 
sand is rammed to make it fit up closely 
and stand firm. The pattern is pulled out 


and molten metal is poured in from a 
ladle. In case of a large casting the 
metal is allowed to run through a gutter 
from the melting pot to the mold. As 
soon as the iron begins to harden it is cov¬ 
ered with sand so that the cooling may 
proceed slowly. 

A more complex pattern like that for 
the castings of a school desk, for instance, 
could not be drawn out without disturb¬ 
ing the sand. For such castings a mold 
is made by means of two frames called 
flasks. The first frame is laid on a table, 
filled level full of casting sand ranuned 
tightly; the pattern is then laid flat on 
the sand and pressed down till half its 
thickness is pressed into the surface. An 
empty frame is then set on the first frame 
and sand filled in and rammed down as 
before. A small hole is made through the 
upper sand reaching to the pattern. The 
upper frame is then lifted off, bringing its 
sand with it. The pattern is taken out 
and the upper frame is set back carefully. 
If all has gone well, a cavity or mold the 
exact shape of the pattern has been form¬ 
ed between the sand of the upper and low¬ 
er flasks. The molten metal is now poured 
into the cavity through the hole provided 
for the purpose, and is allowed to cool. 
The two flasks are then separated and the 
casting is removed. 

Castings may vary in weight from a 
fraction of an ounce to many tons. A 
huge iron casting lately turned out in a 
Pittsburg foundry measured 26 X 8 X 12 
feet and weighed 234,000 pounds—117 
tons. In case of a hollow casting, such as a 
kettle or an iron pipe, an inside mold call¬ 
ed a core, and an outside mold or jacket, 
must be made that the iron may be pour¬ 
ed in between them. Some notion of the 
method of producing such a mold may be 
gained from the article on the Bell. 

See Cast; Sculpture; Iron; Steel. 

Castle, a strongly fortified residence, 
such as was occupied by the nobility of the 
Middle Ages. Castles were a prominent 
feature of feudalism, and, as such, were' 
built throughout western Europe. It is 
considered probable that they grew out of 
the old Roman camp, or defence thrown 
up for the temporary protection of the 


CASTLE 


legions; but the castle differed essentially 
from the camp in that it was a place of 
residence, as well as a stronghold. The 
Normans brought the art of castle build¬ 
ing to its greatest perfection. One reason 
why William the Conqueror subdued Eng¬ 
land so readily was a lack of English for¬ 
tresses built on the Norman plan. 

Castles were, of course, of various sizes 
and shapes. The smaller were large 
enough merely for the accommodation of a 
family, a few domestics, and a handful of 
men. The more pretentious castles of the 
war lords were provided with storehouses, 
stables, and barracks for the accommoda¬ 
tion of a small army of men and horses, 
and were provisioned to withstand a long 
siege. 

Inasmuch as any stone stronghold was 
called a castle, it is difficult to give a de¬ 
scription that applies to all. Castles were 
perched, if possible, on some rocky emi¬ 
nence,—a river bank, or at least a bit of 
rising ground. The entire works were sur¬ 
rounded by a deep moat or ditch. The moat 
was filled with water in time of danger. 
The site of the castle was chosen often 
with a view to filling the moat from a 
nearby stream or lake. The castle of Loch 
Leven, Scotland, was built on a small 
island. In case the site was a peninsula, 
it was necesary to construct a moat across 
the isthmus only. 

Around the inner edge of the moat a 
high wall of masonry was constructed. 
Speaking of the Norman castles built in 
England, this wall was eight or ten feet 
thick, and from twenty to thirty feet high. 
The top was wide enough for two or three 
men to walk abreast. A stone parapet or 
battlement ran around the outer edge to 
protect the defenders. Sometimes it over¬ 
hung, so that stones and molten lead could 
be dropped on besiegers who undertook to 
undermine the walls below. It was pro¬ 
vided usually with embrasures or gaps, 
through which arrows, darts, and stones 
might be discharged upon the besiegers. 
The lower edge of the embrasure was or¬ 
dinarily breast high. There were also 
narrow portholes behind which archers 
might stand in security. Projecting towers 
were built at the corners. The moat was 


crossed by means of a wooden drawbridge, 
hinged at its inner end. Chains wound 
on a windlass in the tower enabled the 
keeper of the drawbridge to pull up the 
outer end until the platform stood erect, 
thus making it necessary for besiegers to 
plunge through the moat in order to reach 
the castle walls. 

The gateway was fortified with great 
care. There was usually an outbuilding, 
called a barbican, which must be taken by 
besiegers before they could reach the gate 
proper. The roadway was flanked by mas¬ 
sive stone towers, united overhead in an 
arch. In addition to strong folding doors 
studded with metal, the passage was de¬ 
fended by a portcullis, a heavy frame 
sliding in grooves in the stonework on 
either side of the gateway. It was raised 
by means of a windlass, and could be let 
drop at a moment’s notice. The defend¬ 
ers of a castle sometimes resorted to the 
dangerous experiment of raising the port¬ 
cullis and allowing as many besiegers to 
enter as could be handled safely; then 
dropping it again. Within this outer wall 
was an open court, known as the outer 
bailey. A second wall constructed like 
the first, only thicker and higher, and 
pierced by a gateway similarly defended, 
separated the outer bailey from a second 
court, known as the inner bailey. 

Within the inner bailey stood the keep, 
a massive four-story stronghold with enor¬ 
mous towers and battlemented walls. The 
keep of the Tower of London, begun by 
William the Conqueror, is 100 feet square 
and four stories high. Its walls are fifteen 
feet in thickness. The keep of Rochester 
Castle, also four stories in height, is sur¬ 
mounted by lofty turrets running a story 
higher. The keep was entered by a single 
doorway, so small that a few men could 
repel the attacks of many. The basement, 
known as the dungeon, or donjon, was 
used for the confinement of captives. It 
was without light or ventilation. The first 
floor of the keep was occupied by soldiers’ 
apartments and a guard room, mess room, 
etc. It was lighted by very small, narrow 
windows, easily defended. The second and 
third floors were provided with larger win¬ 
dows. The state chambers, including the 








CASTOR AND POLLUX 


great dining hall, were situated usually on 
the second floor; the private apartments 
of the family and private chapel were on 
the upper or fourth floor. 

In order to take a castle of this type, 
therefore, it was necessary to pass the 
moat, gain the barbican and outer door¬ 
way, storm the second wall, and lastly to 
gain possession of the keep, the strongest 
building of all. Not infrequently the en¬ 
trance to the latter turned at right angles, 
or wound upward in a spiral, rendering it 
easy of defense. Sometimes the floors were 
built of thick stonework, so that the de¬ 
fenders could retire from story to story, 
making their last stand on the upper floor. 
For the want of gunpowder or other explo¬ 
sives with which to blow up stonework, 
the taking of a strong castle was practical¬ 
ly an impossibility. Unless betrayed by 
treachery, or starved out, a garrison could 
make good the defense for an indefinite 
length of time. In addition to wells for 
the ordinary use of the garrison, keeps of 
this description were provided sometimes 
with a central well, surrounded by strong 
walls, so that water might be drawn 
only from the upper story. In fact, the 
keep was the essential part of a castle. 
Many castles of no little strength had no 
outer defenses. Sometimes the chapel, bar¬ 
racks, residence portion, and keep formed 
part of the outer walls. 

A sort of glamor surrounds castle life. 
In reality, however, a castle was a comfort¬ 
less place of abode. The thickness of the 
walls prevented the entrance of much light. 
The interior was gloomy, dark, damp, and 
poorly ventilated. The inhabitants were 
subject to neuralgia and many diseases 
which sanitary precautions now render in¬ 
frequent. The furniture of the nobility 
was of the rudest description. The sol¬ 
diers slept usually in their clothing on 
straw. Despite gay pennons, uniforms, 
brilliant trappings, and martial music, the 
interior of the castle was oftentimes as 
squalid as the lodge of a typical Indian. It 
is only in contrast with the wretched huts 
of the village, usually found at the foot 
of the castle hill, that the castle itself can 
be accounted a desirable place of residence. 
Things often seem better by contrast. 


As stated, castles in various states of 
preservation are to be seen all over Europe. 
Ruined castles may be seen by the score 
from almost any railway train. A locali¬ 
ty without its ivy-covered castle walls is 
lacking, indeed, in historical associations. 
The Danube and the Rhine, especially the 
banks of the latter, are noted for magnifi¬ 
cent castles. Special articles may be found 
on Warwick, Kenilworth, Tower of 
London, Windsor, Edinburgh and Dum¬ 
barton. Sir Walter Scott has made much 
of the castle. “Norham’s castled steep” 
and “Tantallon’s towers bold” are describ¬ 
ed in the first, fifth, and sixth cantos of 
Marmion. A description of Front-de- 
Boeuf’s smaller castle may be gleaned 
from chapters xxi-xxx of Ivanhoe. 

See Feudalism. 

Castor and Pollux, in Greek and Ro¬ 
man mythology, twin sons of Leda, wife 
of Tyndareus, and Zeus, who was said to 
have wooed Leda in the form of a swan. 
In Homer they are represented as sons of 
Leda and Tyndareus and brothers of Cly- 
temnestra and the beautiful Helen of Troy. 

Castor was famous for his skill in tam¬ 
ing and managing horses; Pollux for 
knowledge of boxing and wrestling. The 
brothers were devotedly attached to each 
other and were inseparable companions in 
many adventures. They were among the 
heroes of the Argonautic expedition. On 
the voyage a terrible storm arose. While 
all were calling on the gods for assistance, 
two stars suddenly appeared above the 
heads of Castor and Pollux. The storm 
immediately subsided and thereafter the 
twin brothers were regarded as the special 
guardians of seamen. On their return 
from this expedition the brothers found 
that their sister Helen had been carried 
off by Theseus. They went to her rescue 
and were successful in bringing her home 
again. 

According to another account Pollux 
only was the son of Zeus. He was there¬ 
fore immortal; but Castor, the son of Tyn¬ 
dareus, was mortal. The brothers became 
involved in a quarrel with Idas and Lyn- 
ceus. Castor was slain, and Pollux, in¬ 
consolable, besought Jupiter to allow him 
to die too, unless Castor might share his 


CASTOR BEAN—CAT 


immortality. Zeus consented that the two 
might divide their time between the lower 
world and the abodes of the gods. 

Still another story is that Zeus reward¬ 
ed their fraternal affection by giving them 
a place among the stars. The two bright 
stars in the constellation Gemini, or “The 
Twins,” are known as Castor and Pollux. 

The brothers received divine honors, es¬ 
pecially among the Dorians. They were 
called Dioscuri, Sons of Jove. It was be¬ 
lieved that in time of battle or great peril 
they occasionally appeared to mortals 
mounted on magnificent white steeds, clad 
in shining garments, and with stars above 
their heads. It is thus they are represent¬ 
ed in ancient art. 

The electric flames sometimes seen to 
play about the masts of vessels during 
storms are often called Castor and Pollux. 
If only one flame appeared, the Romans 
called it Helen, and prophesied a contin¬ 
uation of the storm. If two flames were 
seen they were called Castor and Pollux, 
and boded q cessation of the storm. These 
lights are also called St. Elmo’s fire. See 
St. Elmo’s Fire. 

The names Castor and Pollux are of 
frequent occurrence in literature. In Acts 
xxviii: 11, we find St. Paul embarking in 
a ship named Castor and Pollux. 

But when the sons of Leda shed 
Their star-lamps on our vessel’s head, 

The storm-winds cease, the troubled spray 
Falls from the rocks, clouds flee away, 

And on the bosom of the deep 

In peace the angry billows sleep. —Horace. 

So like they were, no mortal 
Might one from other know; 

White as snow their armor was, 

Their steeds were white as snow. 

Never on earthly anvil 

Did such rare armor gleam, 

And never did such gallant steeds 
Drink of an earthly stream. 


Back comes the chief in triumph 
Who in the hour of fight 
Hath seen the great Twin Brethren 
In harness on his right. 

Safe comes the ship to haven 

Through billows and through gales, 

If once the great Twin Brethren 

Sit shining on the sails.—Macaulay. 

Castor Bean, or castor oil plant, a 
handsome, stately plant, a native of south¬ 


ern Asia or northern Africa. In tropical 
countries it becomes a woody plant reach¬ 
ing a height of thirty feet, but in north 
temperate countries the bean is planted 
from seed in May, reaches a height of from 
three to fifteen feet during the summer, 
and wilts at the first suggestion of frost. 
The castor bean is a plant of remarkable 
growth. In 1907 Oscar Smith of Great 
Bend, Kansas, grew a plant 180 inches 
high in 150 days. The total breadth of 
the plant was 196 inches; the largest leaf 
measured 36 inches in diameter. The 
plant bore 347 leaves 6 inches or more in 
width. Quick growth, colored stems, 
broad purple leaves from six to thirty in¬ 
ches in diameter, and long racemes of yel¬ 
lowish flowers, make the castor bean a 
showy, desirable plant for decorative pur¬ 
poses, especially in the center of a mass 
of foliage plants in a park or other exten¬ 
sive grounds; but it is too large and coarse 
to commend itself to florists. The fruit 
is a burr-like pod containing three oval 
seeds, or beans, from which the castor oil 
of commerce is obtained. Castor oil plants 
are raised for commercial purposes in In¬ 
dia, France, Spain, Brazil, the West In¬ 
dies, and the United States. Illinois and 
Missouri raise seed enough to make St. 
Louis quite a center of Cil production. 
The best quality of oil is obtained by 
crushing the seeds cold. It has a light 
yellow color. It is a thick, smooth oil, 
almost as heavy as water. In addition to 
its use as medicine, castor oil is consid¬ 
ered the best of oil for sewing machines, 
lawn mowers, buggies, and all machinery 
for which it is not too expensive. It is 
also suitable as a dressing for fine leather, 
and is recommended for expensive shoes, 
carriage tops, and costly harness. See 
Medicine; Oil. 

Cat, a family of animals including the 
lion, tiger, panther, lynx, and wildcat. Of 
all domestic animals the common house 
cat retains the greatest number of wild 
characteristics. It has never been tamed 
completely. It cannot be subdued by pun¬ 
ishment, and, although attached to the 
fireside, it pines and dies in captivity. It 
seems to be very like some wild ancestor, 
and yet its origin is unknown. Domesti- 









Wildcat of Old World. 



Angora cat 

CATS. 































CAT 


cated animals are usually larger than their 
wild relatives; but the domestic cat is 
smaller than any known wild cat. Cats 
differ so that it is thought probable that 
they represent more than one forest cat of 
Europe and Asia, perhaps now extinct. 

The cat is preeminently a hunter. It has 
a large, broad head, and a comparatively 
slender body, able to follow wherever the 
head can go. It has long whiskers or 
feelers on the sides of its face, calculated 
to assist its noiseless passage amid bushes 
or other obstructions. The pupil of the 
eye of the cat contracting or expanding in 
a marked degree adapts itself to varying 
degrees of light. That is why the cat can 
see as well at night as by day. The tongue 
is provided with rough, tooth-like projec¬ 
tions that slant backward, giving it a 
rasping surface. The cat has five long, 
sharp claws on the front foot, and four on 
the rear. Each claw is hung on a pecu¬ 
liar joint, and is controlled by a pair of 
muscles. The under muscles draw the 
claws into position for striking and hold¬ 
ing prey; while the upper muscles draw 
the claws upward and backward into little 
pockets in the ends of the toes, so that 
their owners. can step softly on the ball¬ 
like projections of the foot. The cat has 
a remarkably lithe, powerful body, en¬ 
dowed with great endurance, giving rise to 
the proverbial expression that “a cat has 
nine lives.” 

Unlike the mink, the otter, and many 
other flesh-eating animals, the entire cat 
family shuns water. The fur is devoid of 
oil, and is, in consequence, naturally free 
from disagreeable odors. The cat is an 
exceedingly affectionate mother, and has a 
very amusing way of carrying her young 
about by the nape of the neck. The kittens 
are exceedingly frolicsome, giving rise to a 
Scotch proverb often offered mothers who 
are worrying about their wayward children, 
“A wanton kitten aye makes a douce cat.” 

Cats are usually classified as long-haired 
and short-haired, the former including the 
Siamese, Persian, and Abyssinian cats. 
The tabby cat, a term somewhat misunder¬ 
stood, is applied to any cat having a 
light ground color with darker stripes, 
bars, or spots. Thus a yellow cat with 


orange red markings, or a gray cat with 
black markings, is a tabby. The term is 
derived from the name of a watered silk, 
which in turn had its name from the street 
of Atab in Bagdad, noted for its silk 
manufactures. 

The service of the cat to the agriculturist 
is hardly appreciated at its full value. Al¬ 
though long recognized as a famous mouser 
and inveterate foe of rats, few realize 
that, without the assistance of the cat, it 
would be exceedingly difficult to raise or 
store food in the grain producing countries. 
Rats and mice, to say nothing of squirrels, 
multiply with such rapidity that they 
would devour not only grain in the fields 
but the grain in mills and elevators. We 
are sometimes provoked with the cat for 
disturbing the nests of innocent birds; 
but this offense is far more than offset by 
its service in protecting the food supply 
of mankind. 

The Egyptians, who lived in what was 
called the “granary of the world,” are 
said to have recognized the value of the 
cat at an early date. At all events the 
cat was carefully protected and even rever¬ 
enced. Temples were erected in its honor. 
The members of the household shaved off 
their eyebrows as a sign of mourning when 
the cat died, and its mummied remains are 
found along with those of princes and 
priests. 

It is said that the cat is wholly selfish 
in its actions, without affection for the 
members of the household. However that 
may be, the cat has long been a favorite 
companion, holding first place among pets. 
Robinson Crusoe, it will be remembered, 
was exceedingly attached to a cat. On 
the other hand, during the New England 
witchcraft craze, cats were considered the 
familiars of witches. Satan was supposed 
to communicate with his dupes by taking 
the form of a black cat. 

The term cat has been applied variously. 
The cattail is a tall, aquatic herb, with 
sword-like leaves and a central stem, ter¬ 
minating in a cylinder of fuzzy seeds, 
something like a cat’s tail. The cat-o’- 
nine-tails is a cruel whip of nine lashes, 
formerly used on British men-of-war. A 
cat-and-dog affair is a state of permanent 








CATACOMBS—CATALPA 


hostility on a small scale, like that exist¬ 
ing between the cat and dog. It is difficult 
to say just how the expression, “it rains 
cats and dogs,” originated. To “let the 
cat out of the bag” is to divulge a secret, 
while, “a cat may look at a king,” is ex¬ 
pressive of the fundamental equality of 
man. 

See Lion; Tiger; Cougar; Lynx. 

Catacombs, kat'a-koms, subterranean 
burial vaults. The custom of depositing 
the dead in cavern-like passages excavated 
in rock appears to be widespread. Cata¬ 
combs have been found in Phoenicia, Asia 
Minor, on the coasts of Africa and Cy¬ 
prus and Syria, Persia, Upper Egypt, Sici¬ 
ly, and elsewhere. Even the Aztecs of 
Central America deposited bodies, perhaps 
to the extent of millions, in rocky caverns 
which they enlarged and extended for the 
purpose. Abraham, it may be remembered, 
bargained with the children of Heth for 
the cave of Macpelah in which to bury his 
dead. 

The most extensive catacombs known are 
those excavated by the early Christians in 
the tufa or volcanic rock underlying the 
Campagna, or plain, near the city of Rome. 
The Romans cremated, but the Christians 
adopted the Jewish mode of burial. These 
catacombs were made by the early Chris¬ 
tians as a place of burial, but came also 
to be used for refuge. Chapels and places 
for holding public worship were excavated 
in connection with them. The total length 
of the passages is from 350 to 900 miles. It 
is thought that they contain the bones of 
over 6,000,000 people. Many chambers, 
or vaults, are arranged along the sides of 
the passages. Those of important families 
appear to have been marked with slabs of 
stone bearing suitable inscriptions. 

Extensive catacombs are also found near 
Naples, and underground at Cairo. In 
excavating the stone of which the princi¬ 
pal buildings of Paris are constructed the 
quarrymen extended their works to great 
distances beneath the surface of the city, 
leaving pillars to uphold the roof. When 
it became desirable to use the church ceme¬ 
teries within the city for other purposes, 
the bones were collected and deposited in 
these old quarries, and they became places 


of burial. It is said that the catacombs 
of Paris contain several times as many 
people as now dwell within the city. Visi¬ 
tors accompany the officials on their peri¬ 
odical visits of inspection. The air of 
the catacombs is pure and dry. They are 
guarded carefully by the police to prevent 
their becoming the haunts of criminals. 
Guides carrying wax tapers conduct the 
party downward to a distance of seventy 
feet. There are many objects of special in¬ 
terest, including an underground chapel, 
memorial tablets, and a museum of curios¬ 
ities. Some of the passages are hung with 
ghastly festoons of skulls and thigh bones. 
However desirous the visitor may be to 
visit these silent realms of death, he is 
thankful to reach the outer world again. 

Catalpa, ka-tal'pa, a genus of decidu¬ 
ous trees, found in the northern hemisphere 
and belonging to the trumpet-creeper fam¬ 
ily. There are seven or eight species, 
four of which are hardy in temperate re¬ 
gions. The species best known in the 
United States flourishes from New Eng¬ 
land southward. A second species, the 
showy catalpa, is native from southern 
Illinois and Indiana to the Gulf. It is 
cultivated as a park tree as far north as 
central Minnesota. In southern latitudes 
it grows to be a tree 100 feet in height. 
The leaves are broad and heart-shaped at 
the base. The flowers are tubular, bell¬ 
shaped, and two-lipped, with a total spread 
of about two inches. They are showy and 
are succeeded by long ornamental pods 
that hang on during the winter time. The 
wood is soft and close grained, but it is as 
durable as that of the walnut and chestnut. 
Catalpa fence posts are known to have 
lasted eighty-five years. The wood is light 
and is worked easily. It does not check 
in drying. The Indians of the Ohio Val¬ 
ley are said to have preferred a catalpa 
log to all others for canoe making. Ex¬ 
perts in forestry recommend catalpa plant¬ 
ing for wood lots. A thrifty young tree 
is large enough for a fence post at the 
age of fifteen years, and large enough 
for a railroad tie at twenty. Several rail¬ 
road companies are said to be setting out 
catalpas for ties. The catalpa may be 
propagated by seeds and by cuttings. 


CATAMARAN—CATBIRD 


Catamaran', a sort of raft. The origi¬ 
nal catamaran is an invention of the natives 
of Madras, Ceylon, and other Indian 
coasts. It consists of three logs lying side 
by side. The central log is longer and 
much larger than the two others, and is 
pointed at the ends. Holes are bored 
through the logs and all three are stoutly 
lashed to crosspieces. The logs chosen are 
light and full of pitch, which prevents their 
becoming watersoaked. The raft is from 
twenty to twenty-five or thirty feet long, 
and perhaps one-fifth as wide, A sail is 
not infrequently rigged up. The natives 
use the catamaran as a surf boat. As it 
cannot tip over or hold water it rides like 
a duck when other boats would fill and 
sfiik. Passengers who do not fear a 
drenching are conveyed safely to shore or 
ship through surf that would swamp a 
boat. The catamaran of American lakes 
is constructed usually on slender, oblong, 
water-tight boxes instead of logs. Like 
any other raft it affords no protection 
against drenching, but is considered a safe 
sort of craft for boys who enjoy the water. 
See Boat. 

Catapult, a Roman engine of war. Al¬ 
though we use the expressive phrase, “shot 
from a catapult,” we have no exact de¬ 
scription at hand. Makers of cuts have 
conjectured that a powerful bow was 
drawn by winding up a windlass and let 
go by slipping some sort of a catch. By 
this means bolts or arrows were hurled 
with great force. Large catapults requir¬ 
ing the strength of several men were used 
in besieging walled cities. This before the 
invention of cannon. They were capable 
of throwing a six-foot sixty-pound wooden 
bolt, to a distance of 400 yards. Small 
catapults were carried by single soldiers. 
On the whole the catapult seems to have 
been built on the principle of a bow and 
arrow. 

Cataract. See Yosemite; Niagara; 
Victoria; Waterpower. 

Cataract, a disease of the eye, in which 
the crystalline lens gradually becomes 
opaque, resulting in partial or total blind¬ 
ness. The name is said to have come from 
the belief of the ancients that a veil or 
film fell down inside the eye, cutting off 


the sight. A dimming in vision and a 
change in color of the pupil, usually to 
white, marks its onset. No medical treat¬ 
ment avails, but skilled surgeons may re¬ 
move the lens so that with proper spectacles 
sight is partially restored. Cataract is 
fortunately painless and is unusual except 
in elderly people. 

Catarrh, ka-tar', in medicine, an in¬ 
flammation of the mucous membrane that 
lines the air passages of the head and 
throat. The membrane throws off an of¬ 
fensive discharge of matter freely. Ca¬ 
tarrh differs from diphtheria in that the 
surface of the membrane is not destroyed, 
nor does it become covered with patches of 
false growth. Like bleeding, catarrh is 
not a disease; but it is a symptom of 
some general cause—some general disorder 
of the mucous membrane. It arises fre¬ 
quently from a severe cold. Inflamma¬ 
tion of the mucous membrane of the stom¬ 
ach or other tubular organs may also 
occur, and is also termed catarrh. See 
Disease. 

Catawba, ka-taw'ba, in horticulture, an 
excellent variety of cultivated grapes. This 
grape originated from the fox grape of 
the Catawba River in the Carolinas, from 
which locality it takes its name. The 
Catawba grape was brought to perfection 
by Mr. Longworth in a vineyard on the 
hills of Cincinnati. It is of a red, coppery 
color. In size it is midway between a 
Concord and a Delaware. The growers 
of the Ohio Valley are partial to this 
grape, which they send to the market in 
five and ten pound baskets. It is con¬ 
sidered an excellent wine grape. See 
Grapes; Mutation. 

Catbird, a well known slaty-gray bird 
with black crown and tail. About nine 
inches in length. It is related to the wren, 
the brown thrasher, and the mocking bird, 
the latter of which it resembles not a little. 
It ranges from Hudson Bay to the Gulf, 
nesting in dense thickets and closely 
foliaged trees. Three to five eggs, greenish 
blue. The catbird is intensely distressed 
when her nest is discovered. Mrs." Olive 
Thorne Miller gives the catbird a high 
reputation for hospitality and charitable 
behavior toward its unfortunate neighbors, 


CATECHISM—CATGUT 


feeding the hungry and distressed like a 
good Samaritan; but Lowell speaks of cat¬ 
birds as “weasel Scots,” that from their 
home in a syringa bush, tore down the un¬ 
guarded nests of their neighbors. The 
catbird is a fine singer, performing late 
into the night; but it demands prompt 
payment in raspberries and other small 
fruits in sufficient quantities for self and 
fledglings. See Mocking Bird. 

Catechism, kat'e-kizm, a pamphlet or 
volume of religious instruction put in the 
form of question and answer. The Roman 
Catholic catechism was put forth in Latin 
by the Council of Trent in 1556. It has 
been translated into various modern lan¬ 
guages. The first English translation ap¬ 
peared in 1829. The Westminster Shorter 
Catechism, drawn up by a meeting of 
Presbyterian divines at Westminster in 
1647, is taught by the Church of Scotland 
and Presbyterians generally. It was long 
taught by the Congregationalists of New 
England. An a b r i d g- 
ment is the Shorter Cate¬ 
chism, embalmed in lit¬ 
erature as far from a 
delight to children. The 
catechism written by 
Martin Luther is taught 
in Lutheran parochial 
schools the world over. 

The catechism of the 
Church of England has 
been a manual of instruc¬ 
tion for centuries. Other 
denominations, notably 
the Methodists and Bap¬ 
tists, have each a cate¬ 
chism. The Protestant 
dissenters o f England 
were attached to Dr. 

Watts’ catechism. 

Catechu. See Acacia. 

Caterpillar. See Insects. 

Catfish, a family of marine and fresh¬ 
water fishes including 900 species. As a 
family they are sluggish, feeding generally 
in the mud of streams. Some of them 
are good for food, and all are tenacious of 
life, living out of water or in the mud of 
dried up ponds for an astonishing length 
of time. The body is without scales. The 
u.-fi 


mouth is usually surrounded by feelers. 
The first ray of the forward fins is ex¬ 
tended into a sharp spine which inflicts 
painful wounds. Of North American spe¬ 
cies, we have two sea catfishes of a dusky 
bluish color along seashores from New 
York to Texas. The three-foot channel- 
fish, olivaceous in color, with silvery sides 
and a large eye, is an excellent food fish. 
It is found in streams from Vermont to 
Montana and southward to the Gulf. The 
steely blue Mississippi cat is larger and 
stouter than the preceding, reaching a 
weight of 100 pounds. The best known 
catfish is the common bullhead or horned 
pout, found in muddy bottoms of ponds 
and streams everywhere. It can make a 
living after all other fish, even the pick¬ 
erel, have been destroyed. It is a nuisance 
to the angler for perch, wall-eye, or bass. 
Thoreau has noted its ways well. 


Catbird (see preceding page.) 

as if about its business. They are taken at 
night with a mass of worms strung on a thread* 
which catches in their teeth, sometimes three or 
four, with an eel, at one pull. They are ex¬ 
tremely tenacious of life, opening and shutting 
their mouths for half an hour after their heads 
have been cut off. A bloodthirsty and bullying 
race of rangers, inhabiting the fertile river bot¬ 
toms, with ever a lance in rest, and ready to do 
battle with their nearest neighbor .—A Week . 

Catgut, a sort of string prepared from 
the intestines of sheep and other animals, 


The horned-pout is a dull and blundering 
fellow, fond of the mud. It bites deliberately 







CATHARINE I—CATHARINE OF ARAGON 


t 


never those of a cat. The Century Dic¬ 
tionary suggests that the word may have 
been kitgut, “kit” meaning a violin, and 
that the change to catgut may have come 
about from a careless confusion of kit and 
cat. The intestines are cleansed very 
thoroughly, steeped in water, and all fatty 
matters removed. The external membrane 
is scraped away with a dull blade, and the 
clean gut is then drawn through a per¬ 
foration or twisted into shape and dried. 
The best gut is prepared in Milan and 
Naples. The poorer the animal, the less 
fat to be removed from the intestines, the 
better the string. Catgut is exceedingly 
tough, flexible, and durable. Catgut is 
used extensively for the strings of violins, 
harps, and other stringed instruments. It 
is used also by clockmakers for weight 
cords in high grade clocks. In 1868 Dr. 
Lister, a professor of surgery in Glasgow, 
the same from whom listerine takes its 
name, discovered a new use for catgut. 
Prior to this time surgeons used silk thread 
to tie arteries. They depended on the 
final decay of the silk and its absorption 
by the system. Sometimes the silk rotted 
too soon, that is, before the artery had 
fully united, in which case the artery broke 
open and required to be retied; and, in any 
case, the rotting silk formed an objection¬ 
able spot of foreign matter; Dr. Lister 
used catgut instead. He found that a bit 
of properly sterilized catgut tied about a 
cut in an artery turns into artery wall. 
See Surgery. 

Catharine I (1684-1727), empress of 
Russia. She was the daughter of a Roman 
Catholic peasant, and became the Lutheran 
wife of a Swedish dragoon. When Ma- 
rienburg was stormed in 1702 she fell into 
the hands of one and then another Russian 
officer; finally becoming the mistress, then 
the wife, and lastly, in 1724, such was her 
influence, the empress of Peter the Great. 
In 1711 she rendered her husband signal 
service in a war with the Turks. He was 
on the brink of destruction when she ob¬ 
tained an influence over the grand vizier, 
bribed his servants with her jewelry, and 
secured better terms for Peter than he had 
any reason to expect. Prince Menshikoff, 
whom she met before Peter saw her, stood 


her friend, and on Peter’s death had her 
proclaimed empress and autocrat of all 
the Russias. Catharine was an unprinci¬ 
pled, profligate adventuress, but she did 
much for Peter and much for Russia. She 
died, it is said, in a tipsy debauch. She 
could neither read nor write. 

Catharine II (1729-1796), empress of 
Russia. She was a severely educated Ger¬ 
man princess selected for the wife of 
Peter III, to whom she was wedded in 
1745. He proved a weak, dissolute prince, 
unfaithful to his wife. The Orloff family 
shut him up in prison and proclaimed 
Catharine autocrat in 1762. Peter died 
soon after under suspicious circumstances 
—strangled by the Orloffs, it was said. 
Catharine was doubtless an unprincipled, 
licentious woman, but she ruled for over 
thirty years with an ability second only to 
that of Peter the Great. The latter de¬ 
clared that the Baltic and the Black Sea 
were the eyes through which Russia must 
look out upon the world. Peter secured 
the Baltic eye and Catharine led the Turks 
a rough life until she had secured the 
Black Sea eye. She formed an alliance 
with Frederick the Great. She was a party 
to the division of Poland, and obtained 
quite a section of Polish territory. By 
correspondence with Voltaire and other 
eminent men she won a reputation as a 
friend of literature. Aside from extending 
the bounds of Russia, Catharine saw that 
roads were built, canals dug, towns 
founded, commerce extended and pro¬ 
tected. Under more liberal laws farmers 
were protected in the enjoyment of their 
crops and business prospered. More would 
have been accomplished had not the French 
Revolution broken out. It gave Catharine 
and her friends an idea that education and 
privileges make people dissatisfied—a no¬ 
tion still too prevalent among the Russian 
aristocracy. Thomas Carlyle called 
Catharine a female Louis XIV. See Po¬ 
land; Kosciusko; Peter the Great; 
Frederick the Great. 

Catharine of Aragon (1485-1536), 
queen of England and wife of Henry 
VIII. She was the youngest daughter 
of the Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain in 
whose reign Columbus discovered America. 


CATHARINE DE MEDICI—CATHEDRAL 


In 1501 she married Arthur, son of the 
king of England. On the death of this 
prince, the king, desiring, it is said, to 
retain her money, caused her to marry 
his second son, who afterward became 
Henry VIII of England. The Pope 
granted a dispensation, as required for 
wedding a husband’s brother, and Catha¬ 
rine and Henry ascended the throne of 
England together in 1509. See Henry 
VIII; Anne Boleyn ; Mary I. 

Catharine de Medici (1519-1589), 
queen of France. She was a daughter of 
Lorenzo de Medici of Florence and a niece 
of Pope Clement VII. In 1533 she mar¬ 
ried Henry, son of Francis I of France. 
She came of a family noted for ability 
and intrigue, and is considered one of the 
worst of the family. She, more than any 
other, involved the Protestants and Catho¬ 
lics of France in destructive factional war¬ 
fare. She was a Catholic, of course, but 
appears to have been quite ready to betray 
friend or foe, as might seem to advance 
her own interests. She is responsible for 
the terrible massacre of St. Bartholomew, 
perpetrated in the reign of her son, Charles 
IX. In spite of her reputation for politi¬ 
cal intrigue, Catharine was a woman of ele¬ 
gant manners and refined tastes, a patron 
of literature, sculpture, and painting. See 
Coligni ; Huguenots. 

Cathedral, the chief church of the di¬ 
ocese, the Church in which the bishop has 
his chair or seat. From the fact that the 
bishop’s church is likely to be a wealthy 
church, we have become accustomed to 
expect a grand building. As a matter of 
fact, a cathedral may be a lonely hut in 
a remote missionary field. Moreover, the 
bishop’s cathedra or chair may be removed 
from one church to another, or from one 
town to another, just as a king may change 
his capital. So far as this article goes, 
it may be regarded merely as a description 
of the important and dignified church 
buildings for which western Christianity 
has been noted. 

The early cathedral differed little from 
the oblong, rectangular Roman basilica or 
hall of justice. The famous Cathedral of 
Worms is considered an excellent example 
of a church half way between the early 


basilica and the later styles. One of the 
earliest and the most significant changes 
was the alteration of the ground plan by 
giving it the form of a cross, symbolical 
of the Christian religion. This was ef¬ 
fected by building a second rectangle or 
transept across the first. 

The ground plan of a typical cathedral 
has, first of all, the shape of a cross. The 
parts may be of varying length and width, 
but the cross is the controlling idea. The 
Cathedral of St. Mark at Venice is nearly 
square. Others have a long nave and 
short transepts, but the cross is still the 
predominant feature. At the head of the 
cross is the choir. It projected eastward 
not only toward the rising sun, but, in 
western Europe, toward the sepulcher of 
Christ. This gave rise to the terms east, 
west, north, and south as used by archi¬ 
tects. The west portal is opposite the 
choir, and the north and south transepts 
are on the left hand and on the right hand 
respectively, as one walks through the nave 
from the west portal toward the choir. 
The roof of the nave was usually much 
higher than the aisles, giving opportunity 
for a clerestory and windows, and creat¬ 
ing the impression of vast spaciousness. 
Galleries ran around the nave above the 
aisles, increasing the seating capacity of 
the edifice. In many churches, at least, 
the north aisle was set apart for men and 
the south for women. 

In the old basilica the nave was some¬ 
times left uncovered, but the Christians 
put on a roof. Towers were built to carry 
chimes of bells, and spires were added, 
pointing heavenward. The round arch of 
the Romans grew into the high arch of the 
Normans, and the latter into the pointed 
arch. From an architectural point of view, 
the most celebrated cathedrals are of the 
pointed style, known popularly as Gothic. 
The French, English, and Germans,—the 
Roman Catholics everywhere,—excelled in 
the construction of these churches. 

The earlier cathedrals were decorated in 
paint and stucco. Christ wearing his 
crown of thorns, or bearing his cross, was 
a central thought. Favorite symbols were 
the lamb, emblematical of Christ; the 
dove, symbol of the Holy Ghost and of 



CATHERWOOD—CATHOLIC CHURCH 


mildness and gentleness; the heart, sym¬ 
bol of Christian longing; the peacock, 
bird of immortality; the phoenix, sign of 
the resurrection; the olive leaf, used as the 
sign of peace; the palm leaf as the reward 
of martyrdom; and the anchor and lyre 
as emblems of Christian confidence and 
joy. The Old Testament was drawn upon 
for scenes illustrative of the Bible story 
of Adam and Eve, Cain, Abel, and Abra¬ 
ham, Noah and the ark, Daniel in the den 
of lions, and Jonah swallowed by a whale. 

Later the carver executed wonders in 
wood, and later still the sculptor’s art cre¬ 
ated decorations in stone. The older cathe¬ 
drals, with solid round arches and painted 
wall decorations, have an air of solidity 
and repose. The great pointed cathedral 
is instinct with life and yearning and as¬ 
piration. Though built of stone, from 
foundation to the topmost point of spire 
and pinnacle, it rises into the air with en¬ 
ergetic lightness and the grace of frost 
work. The spires, rib-like walls, flying 
buttresses, sculptured portals, pillars, for¬ 
est-like aisles, galleries, stained glass, rich 
altars, and intense reverent atmosphere of 
a pointed cathedral produce an effect that 
is not approached by any other form of 
architecture. 

The most celebrated American cathe¬ 
drals are those of Baltimore, New York, 
Mexico, and Montreal. The Protestant 
Episcopal diocese of New York is erecting 
an edifice designed to be the most ambitious 
structure of the sort in the New World. It 
is to cost $10,000,000 and to be fourth in 
size among the world’s sanctuaries. The 
general style is Romanesque. It depends 
for effect on a large vaulted and domed 
central area rather than on long pillared 
vistas. 

The Gothic church plainly originated in a 
rude adaptation of the forest trees with all their 
boughs to a festal or solemn arcade, as the bands 
about the cleft pillars still indicate the green 
withes that tied them. No one can walk in a 
road cut through pine woods, without being 
struck with the architectural appearance of the 
grove, especially in winter, when the barrenness 
of all other trees shows the low arch of the Sax¬ 
ons. In the woods in a winter afternoon one 
will see as readily the origin of the stained glass 
window, with which the Gothic cathedrals are 
idorned, in the colors of the western sky seen 


through the bare and crossing branches of the 
forest.—Emerson. 

Catherwood, Mary Hartwell (1847- 

1902), an American novelist. She was 
born in Luray, Ohio, and died in Chicago. 
Her education was received at the Gran¬ 
ville Female College. The romantic side 
of American history has furnished material 
for most of Mrs. Catherwood’s novels. Al¬ 
though not her earliest novel, The Ro¬ 
mance of Dollard was the first to bring 
fame to its writer. Other volumes worthy 
of mention are The White Islander, The 
Days of Jeanne D’Arc, Old Kaskaskia, 
The Lady of Fort St. John, and Lazare. 

Cath'ode Rays, a phenomenon resulting 
from an electrical discharge within a 
vacuum tube from which all but about one 
millionth of the air has been removed. 
The platinum wire by which the electricity 
enters the tube is called the anode, and 
where it leaves, the cathode. It is from the 
latter that these peculiar rays seem to 
come, causing the glass to shine with a 
green phosphorescent light. These rays 
travel in straight lines, cast shadows, and 
are capable of being deflected by a magnet, 
which has led to the belief that they are 
streams of minute particles. Though ob¬ 
served some years previously, it is to 
Crookes, who in 1876 called them to the 
attention of scientists, that we are mainly 
indebted. While cathode rays are not so 
important in themselves, they have the pe¬ 
culiar power, when they strike the walls of 
the vacuum tube, of setting up another 
kind of radiation known as X-rays. See 
Crookes ; X-ray. 

Catholic Church, The, in its largest 
sense the entire body of Christian believ¬ 
ers ; in a restricted, but ordinarily accepted 
sense, the Church of Rome; those who 
recognize the see of Rome, that is to say, 
the pope, as the head of the church. It is 
impossible to condense the doctrine of the 
greatest church on earth into a few lines. 
A full discussion must recognize four car¬ 
dinal points of belief: the supremacy of 
the pope or a belief in his full authority 
in matters of faith and morals; the right 
of the church to say what the Scriptures 
mean; the sacrament of confession and 
penance as a divinely appointed way to ob- 



Pope Pius X 
Cardinal Farley 


Pope Benedict XV 


Cardinal Gibbons 
Cardinal O’Connell 



































































CATHOLIC CHURCH 


tain forgiveness of sins; and the direct line 
of apostolic succession or priesthood de¬ 
rived through the apostles from Jesus 
Christ himself. 

As to its practical teachings, the most 
important are: equality of prince and 
peasant, regardless of nationality or color; 
the wickedness of human slavery; the duty 
of priesthood to refrain from marriage ; 
the doctrine that marriage may not be can¬ 
celled by divorce, “What God hath joined 
together, let no man put asunder”; the 
sanctity of human life, “Thou shalt not 
kill”; the duty of providing for the unfor¬ 
tunate, as by hospitals and asylums. The 
latter end is attained largely by voluntary 
associations of men, called monks, and 
women, called nuns, who withdraw from 
the world, refrain from marriage, and de¬ 
vote their lives to works of mercy and char- 
ity * 

A Catholic authority writing at the be¬ 
ginning of the century estimates that of 
447,000,000 Christians, 230,000,000 be¬ 
long to the Church of Rome. Of these 
160,000,000 live in Europe and 58,000,- 
000 in the two Americas. Of European 
countries, those situated on the Mediterra¬ 
nean are most solidly Catholic. France 
has 35,000,000; Sweden and Norway have 
but 1,000 each. There are in the United 
States, speaking for 1906, about 14,484 
priests, 11,814 churches, and about 12,- 
000,000 adherents. There are (1910) 22,- 
587,079 Catholics under the United States 
flag. The count includes the Catholics of 
the United States proper, Alaska, the Phil¬ 
ippines, Porto Rico, and the Hawaiian 
Islands. The Catholic population under the 
British flag, is 12,053,418. In the United 
States proper there are 12,347,027 Cath¬ 
olics. The directory shows 4,845 parochial 
schools in the United States, with an attend¬ 
ance of 1,237,251. The Catholic popula¬ 
tion of the leading states in the Union is as 
follows: 

New York, 2,722,649; Pennsylvania, 
1,494,766; Illinois drops from second to 
third place with 1,443,752; Massachusetts 
is next, with 1,373,772 ; Ohio has 619,265; 
Louisiana, 557,431 ; Wisconsin, 532,217 ; 
New Jersey, 496,000; Michigan, 489,451 ; 
Missouri, 452,703 ; Minnesota, 427,627 ; 


California, 391,500; Connecticut, 370,- 
000; Texas, 283,917 ; Iowa, 242,009; 
Rhode Island, 242,000; Indiana, 218,758; 
Kentucky, 194,296. 

There are in the United States 1 papal 
delegate, 3 cardinals, 14 archbishops, 97 
bishops, and 21 abbots. There are 86 sem¬ 
inaries for ecclesiastical students. 

In addition to the secular clergy there 
are 40 religious orders of priests' represent¬ 
ed in the United States, the principal ones 
being the Jesuits, Benedictines, Capuchins, 
Franciscans, Dominicans, Holy Cross Fa¬ 
thers, Paulists, Redemptorists, and Oblates. 
Representatives of 122 sisterhoods are en¬ 
gaged in teaching in the country. 

New York and Chicago are rated as hav¬ 
ing 1,200,000 Catholic inhabitants each. In 
this count the villages and suburban towns 
are included. The archdiocese of New 
York does not embrace the city of Brook¬ 
lyn, which is a diocese itself. The Boston 
diocese, which includes a large manufactur¬ 
ing territory outside the city, follows with 
a Catholic population of 700,000, while 
the diocese of Brooklyn is fourth with 500,- 
000. Philadelphia is fifth with 485,000 and 
New Orleans sixth, with a population of 
450,000, while Pittsburg, St. Louis, Cleve¬ 
land, Newark, and Hartford follow. The 
archdiocese of Milwaukee is the fourteenth 
largest in the country with a population of 
235,000. New York heads the list as to 
the number of priests, there being 824. 
Chicago follows with 643 clergymen, Bos¬ 
ton 598, Philadelphia 521, St. Louis 507, 
Pittsburg 422, Baltimore 405, Milwaukee 
362, and Cleveland 353. 

Baltimore is the residence of Cardinal 
Gibbons; New York City, of Cardinal 
Farley; and Boston, of Cardinal O’Connell. 

The following passage is taken from 
Macaulay’s brilliant essay on Ranke's His¬ 
tory of the Popes: 

There is not, and there never was on this 
earth, a work of human policy so well deserv¬ 
ing of examination as the Roman Catholic 
Church. The history of that Church joins to¬ 
gether the two great ages of human, civilization. 
No other institution is left standing which car¬ 
ries the mind back to the times when the smoke 
of sacrifice rose from the Pantheon, and when 
camelopards and tigers bounded in the Flavian 
amphitheatre. The proudest royal houses are 
but of yesterday, when compared with the line 


4 


CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY—CATO 


of the Supreme Pontiffs. ... Nor do we see 
any sign which indicates that the term of her 
long dominion is approaching. She saw the 
commencement of all the governments and of 
all the ecclesiastical establishments that now ex¬ 
ist in the world ; and we feel no assurance that 
she is not destined to see the end of them all. 
She was great and respected before the Saxon 
had set foot on Britain, before the Frank had 
passed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence still 
flourished in Antioch, when idols were still 
worshipped in the temple of Mecca. And she 
may still exist in undiminished vigour when 
some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the 
midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a 
broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the 
ruins of St. Paul’s. 

See Church ; Christianity. 

Catholic University of America, an 

institution of higher learning, under the 
auspices of the Roman Catholic Church. 
It is located at Washington, D. C. It was 
organized in 1884, incorporated a year 
later, received its constitution from Pope 
Leo XIII in 1887, and in 1889 was opened 
for instruction. Its courses are designed 
to give training for various professions, 
and to offer to graduates from Catholic 
colleges an opportunity for original re¬ 
search. The faculty numbers thirty, and 
there are over two hundred students. 

Catiline (108-62 B. C.), a Roman sen¬ 
ator. He was descended from a patrician 
but impoverished family. In politics he 
was an adherent of Sulla. He held vari¬ 
ous public positions, including that of prae¬ 
tor and governor of Africa. In 66 B. C. 
he desired the consulship, but was defeated. 

Catiline was a man of depraved morals, 
intemperate habits, and of inordinate am¬ 
bition. He surrounded himself with a co¬ 
terie of young nobles who were noted for 
gambling, drinking, and every sort of 
debauchery. He formed a conspiracy to 
overthrow the authority of the Senate and 
place himself and companions in author¬ 
ity. Fulvia, a mistress of one of the con¬ 
spirators, revealed the plot to the consul 
Cicero, who immediately set spies at work 
to ferret out the details. November 8th, 
after hostilities had actually been begun in 
the provinces, Catiline had the audacity to 
take his regular seat in the senate, where¬ 
upon Cicero turned upon him with the fa¬ 
mous Catilir.ian oration, beginning “How 
long, now, O Catiline, will you abuse our 


patience?” To the astonishment of Cati¬ 
line, Cicero went on to lay before the sen¬ 
ate the innermost details of the plot. Cat¬ 
iline arose with haggard face and bloodshot 
eye. He made a miserable shift to reply; 
then, with curses on his lips, he turned 
with unsteady step and left the chamber. 
He hurried from Rome to join his forces 
in Etruria. Lentulus and others of the con¬ 
spirators who remained in Rome to gather 
intelligence were arrested and executed as 
traitors. The consul Antoninus was sent 
against the forces of Catiline. Catiline 
fought with desperate bravery at the head 
of his troops, but was defeated and slain. 

See Sallust; Cicero; Ibsen. 

Catlin, kat'lm, George (1796-1872), 
an American writer and painter. He was 
born at Wilkesbarre, Pennsylvania, and 
died at Jersey City, New Jersey. He set 
up at Philadelphia as a portrait painter. 
He traveled extensively among various 
tribes of American Indians,—no less than 
forty-eight it is said. He exhibited Indian 
sketches in Europe and subsequently con¬ 
ducted three parties of Indians in full cos¬ 
tume from city to city of the Old World. 
PIis chief written work is a finely illus¬ 
trated two-volume account of The Man¬ 
ners, Customs, and Condition of the North 
American Indians. Over 500 original 
portraits and sketches are preserved in the 
National Museum at Washington, D. C. 
Future writers will owe much to Catlin 
for his descriptions and illustrations. See 
Indians. 

Catnip, or Catmint, a mint-like plant. 
It is an immigrant from Europe, now quite 
at home in rich, shady spots around farm 
buildings and under pasture fences. It 
has a square stem, soft, hairy, heart-shaped 
leaves, and a white, deeply two-lipped flow¬ 
er, dotted with purple. Catnip tea is a 
standard remedy for a cold or colic. A 
bunch of catnip keeps company with bone- 
set in all old-fashioned attics worth the 
name. A closely related creeping plant is 
often called ground ivy. See Medicine. 

Cato (234-149 B. C.), a Roman states¬ 
man, surnamed “the Censor” and “the 
Wise.” He served with Fabius during the 
invasion by Hannibal. He held a number 
of public positions. He was praetor in 


CATO THE YOUNGER—CATTALO 


command of Sardinia, served as consul, 
and did his best to keep a law on the stat¬ 
ute books requiring women to dress in plain 
colors and to wear little or no jewelry. By 
such an attitude, and by inflexible honesty, 
he became popular with the people and was 
made censor, an office designed to amend 
whatever seemed to be going wrong. Some 
one asked him why a statue had not been 
erected in his honor. Cato replied, “I 
would rather have it asked why no image 
has been erected to Cato than have it asked 
why one had been set up.” After the Sec¬ 
ond Punic War Cato was sent on an em¬ 
bassy to Carthage, and returned so aston¬ 
ished by its rapid recovery and its wealth, 
that he sought every opportunity to ad¬ 
monish the Roman senate of the danger 
of allowing so powerful a city to remain, 
ending every speech with the words now 
become proverbial, “Carthage must be de¬ 
stroyed.” See Scipio; Carthage. 

Cato the Younger (95-46 B. C.), a 
Roman general and statesman. He was a 
great-grandson of Cato the Censor. Like 
his great ancestor he was a man of strict 
integrity, popular with the people. Among 
philosophers he is known as a Stoic. He 
served in military operations against the 
Spartans and in Macedonia. In the troub¬ 
lous days of the Catilinian conspiracy he 
supported Cicero. He opposed the plans 
of Pompey, Crassus, and Caesar. To get 
rid of him they sent him to govern Cyprus. 
He distinguished himself by turning an 
immense sum of money into the public 
treasury instead of stealing it. When Cras¬ 
sus and Pompey came to blows he took 
sides against Caesar, and, after his defeat 
at Munda, retired to the little city of Utica, 
near Carthage, where he fell on his sword 
rather than be reconciled to Caesar. Cae¬ 
sar is said to have exclaimed: “I grudge 
thee thy death, since thou hast grudged 
me the honor of sparing thy life.” The 
residence of so great a man in so obscure 
a place gave point to the expression, “No 
pent-up Utica contracts your powers.” 
Addison’s tragedy of Cato is founded on 
the life of this Roman. 

Catskill Mountains, a group of moun¬ 
tains about 2,000 feet high in southeastern 
New York. They have been stripped of 


their forests and are unfit for farming, but 
they furnish an unlimited supply of blue 
stone for building, and are a fine summer 
resort for the inhabitants of New York 
City. Irving has laid the scene of Rip 
Van Winkle’s exploits in the Catskills. 
Passing up or down the Hudson Valley, 
the traveler is impressed by these moun¬ 
tains. They show to better advantage than 
the Alleghanies. The more elevated peaks 
reach a height of over 4,000 feet. 

Whoever has made a voyage up the Hudson 
must remember the Catskill Mountains. They 
are seen away to the west of the river, swell¬ 
ing up to a noble height, and lording it over the 
surrounding country. Every change of season, 
every change of weather, indeed every hour of 
the day, produces some changes in the magical 
hues and shapes of these mountains; and they are 
regarded by all the good wives, far and near, as 
perfect barometers.—Irving. 

Cat-Tail, a plant of the swamps. A 
cluster of long, upright, sword-like leaves 
springs from the root. Two kinds of 
inconspicuous flowers are borne on a sin¬ 
gle tall stem at the height of a man’s head. 
The fruit develops into a heavy, seal brown, 
cylindrical spike an inch or two in diam¬ 
eter. In pioneer days the cottony fruit 
was sometimes stripped from the stem and 
used in a tick as a substitute for feathers. 
In India elephants are fond of feeding on 
the cat-tail. The underground portion of 
the plant is starchy and is used in some 
countries for food. The cat-tail, with its 
long, graceful leaves and decorative cylin¬ 
der of fruit, is a favorite plant with artists. 

Cattalo, a name given to a hybrid be¬ 
tween the native bison and the domestic 
cow. The word is coined from cattle 
and buffalo—catt(le buff)alo. It is claimed 
by enthusiastic breeders that the cross 
forms a large, gentle, hardy beef animal. 
The cross is effected usually with Gallo¬ 
way or Aberdeen-Angus cows. The calves 
are more likely to be black than brown. 
They are hardy chaps covered with dense, 
soft, curly hair of even length on all parts 
of the body. The pelts are regarded as 
superior to buffalo robes. Like bison, the 
cattalos are able to outweather the winter 
storms of our Western railches and to dig 
their food out of snowdrifts in which cat¬ 
tle would perish. There are, as yet (1909), 


CATTLE 


less than 1,000 cattalos. The experiment 
may be only a passing fancy, but much 
is claimed for it. See Bison. 

Cattle, live stock. In its widest sense, 
the term includes horses, asses, camels, 
even goats, sheep, and swine. In stock- 
raising, however, it signifies animals, both 
large and small, of the cow kind. 

Cattle have been domesticated so long 
that it is difficult to trace their origin. Some 
have supposed that they are descended 
from the wild ox of Central Europe. The 
goat in mountainous countries, the camel 
in the desert, the yak in the high altitudes 
of Asia, the reindeer on the mossy tundras 
of the north, and the cow on the grassy 
plains of all countries, each in the coun¬ 
try to which it is best suited, furnishes 
milk, butter, cheese, flesh, leather, and 
tents for multitudes of people, and has 
rendered the development of civilization 
possible. 

Horses are a luxury. Cattle are a ne¬ 
cessity. Our cattle have been imported 
from western Europe. They were brought 
first to the New World by Columbus in 
1493, and were introduced into Mexico by 
the Spaniards in 1525. The common cat¬ 
tle of the Gulf States, as far north as Vir¬ 
ginia, and the long-horned Texas cattle, 
are descended from this Spanish stock. 
Cattle were imported from England into 
Massachusetts in 1624. Dutch cattle were 
brought to New York in 1627, and Danish 
breeds to New Hampshire in 1631. In the 
early days of the colonies Devons, Here- 
fords, Shorthorns, Polled-Angus, Gallo¬ 
ways, and Alderneys were introduced, but 
no attempt was made to keep the breeds 
pure. Pure bred Shorthorns were intro¬ 
duced into Kentucky in 1816; the breed¬ 
ing of pure Herefords in this country 
began in New York in 1840; the introduc¬ 
tion of pure Polled-Angus cattle dates from 
1870. Dairy farmers have introduced the 
Jerseys from the Channel Islands. 

The history of cattle raising may be di¬ 
vided into two branches, that of cattle on 
farms and cattle on ranges. The manage¬ 
ment of cattle on an ordinary farm is too 
well known to require comment. A few 
cattle are kept according to the amount 
of pasture and feed available. The steers 


are raised for beef, and cows are cared for 
as dairy animals. 

On the wide, grassy plains of Australia, 
Argentina, and North America, however, 
cattle are reared in immense herds. In¬ 
stead of stables, barns, and winter feeding, 
the cattle run wild like buffalo or deer. 
The calves run with the cows. No use 
whatever is made of the milk, except that 
a cow or two may .be tethered near the 
rancher’s shack for the use of the family. 
Under this system it is impossible for a 
rancher to know just how many cattle he 
owns. An unbranded calf old enough to 
have separated from its mother is called 
a maverick, and belongs to any one who 
wishes to put his brand upon it. Once a 
year the cattle in a given region are round¬ 
ed up by riders, and the calves are brand¬ 
ed, usually on the hip, by a white-hot iron, 
with a mark of ownership. They are then 
released, to run without attention for an¬ 
other year. In the winter season they live 
on standing grass, which in these regions 
has the peculiar quality of drying up into 
excellent hay as it stands. The United 
States leads the world in cattle raising. 
Russia comes second with 43,000,000 head. 

A recent United States agricultural re¬ 
port gives the following as the number of 
cattle on farms in the United States, with 
an estimate for the world: 


State or Territory. Milch cows. Other cattle. 


Maine .. 

. ... 179,000 

145,000 

New Hampshire .... 

. .. . 124,000 

97,000 

Vermont . 

.... 288,000 

214,000 

Massachusetts . 

... 194,000 

90,000 

Rhode Island . 

26,000 

10,000 

Connecticut . 

.. . 137,000 

83,000 

New York . 

. . . 1,789,000 

898,000 

New Jersey . 

. . . 190,000 

82,000 

Pennsylvania . 

... 1,152,000 

965,000 

Delaware . 

38,000 

22,000 

Maryland . 

... 158,000 

141,000 

Virginia . 

.. . 294,000 

578,000 

West Virginia . 

. . . 247,000 

538,000 

North Carolina . 

.. . 294,000 

454,000 

South Carolina . 

. .. 139,000 

225,000 

Georgia . 

... 311,000 

680,000 

Florida . 

93,000 

691,000 

Ohio . 

. . . 947,000 

998,000 

Indiana . 

. . . 680,000 

1,052,000 

Illinois . 

... 1,220,000 

2,056,000 

Michigan . 

... 891,000 

993,000 

Wisconsin . 

... 1,462,000 

1,114,000 

Minnesota . 

... 1,092,000 

1,253,000 

Iowa . 

... 1,586,000 

3,842,000 

Missouri . 

. . . 984,000 

2,232,000 




























THE ROUND UP 
















IDAHO SHEEP RANGE 









CATTLE TICK—CAUCUS 


State or Territory 

Milch cows. 

Other cattle. 

North Dakota . 

. 235,000 

642,000 

South Dakota . 

. 643,000 

1,397,000 

Nebraska . 

. 897,000 

3,200,000 

Kansas . 

. 744,000 

3,505,000 

Kentucky . 

. 402,000 

700,000 

Tennessee . 

. 334,000 

595,000 

Alabama . 

. 289,000 

544,000 

Mississippi . 

. 330,000 

595,000 

Louisiana . 

. 196,000 

480,000 

Texas . 

. 1,126,000 

7,668,000 

Oklahoma . 

. 338,000 

1,760,000 

Arkansas . 

. 388,000 

674,000 

Montana . 

75,000 

905,000 

Wyoming . 

25,000 

872,000 

Colorado . 

. 158,000 

1,454,000 

New Mexico . 

28,000 

939,000 

Arizona . 

24,000 

639,000 

Utah . 

85,000 

327,000 

Nevada . 

18,000 

404,000 

Idaho . 

76,000 

347,000 

Washington . 

. 195,000 

381,000 

Oregon . 

. 169,000 

743,000 

California . 

. 430,000 

1,155,000 

United States . . . . 

.21,720,000 

49,379,000 

The neat cattle of the world 

are distrib- 

uted about as follows 



Canada . 


.. 8,000,000 

United States . 


. 73,000,000 

Mexico . 


. . 5,000,000 

Central America. 


. 2,000,000 

Cuba . 


. 3,000,000 

South America . 


. 76,000,000 

Europe . 


. 126,000,000 

Asia . 


. 112,000,000 

Africa . 


. 9,500,000 

Australia, etc. 


. 12,000,000 


Total for the world.428,000,000 

See Packing House; Beef; Butter; 
Milk; Cold Storage; Chicago; Cheese. 

Cattle Tick, an insect related to the 
mite. Like other ticks it has a parasitic 
habit of living on the blood of other ani¬ 
mals, particularly cattle. It is a native of 
the western and southwestern plains where 
it has become a pest, not so much on its 
own account, but because it imbibes the 
germs of the Texas cattle fever from the 
blood of an infected animal and carries 
them, just as certain mosquitoes carry the 
germs of malaria, to healthy animals. 
Southwestern cattle have become immune 
to the fever, that is to say, their blood has 
acquired a quality which prevents the fever 
germs from multiplying; but northern cat¬ 
tle die of the plague in great numbers. In 
order to kill the ticks, cattle shipped out 
of infected districts are dipped by driving 


them through deep tanks of cottonseed or 
other oil before loading them on cars. 
Dipping tanks are now a regular feature 
of shipping stations throughout the cattle¬ 
raising country. At maturity the female 
tick gorges itself most disgustingly with 
blood, loosens its hold on the animal’s 
hide, and drops to the ground where it lays 
its eggs and dies. On hatching out the 
young climb up bushes and fasten them¬ 
selves to passing cattle to which they cling 
and feed until they are full grown. 

Catullus (87-54 B. C.), a Roman poet. 
Catullus belonged to a wealthy and dis¬ 
tinguished family. In brilliancy, wit, 
choice of subjects, style, and disregard of 
domestic proprieties, Catullus stands with 
the school of Roman writers most nearly 
represented in English literature by Shel¬ 
ley and Byron. His extant works are 116 
lyric, elegiac, and epigrammatic poems. 

Caucasian Race, one of the three great 
races of mankind. It is the white race, as 
distinguished from the yellow and the 
black races. The name is derived from the 
Caucasus Mountains in which the finest 
specimens of the race were believed to live. 
The original home of the white man is be¬ 
lieved to be North Africa. Roughly speak¬ 
ing, Europe and North Africa, including 
Abyssinia, Western Asia and India, Aus¬ 
tralasia and the two Americas, exclusive 
of Indians and Africans, are peopled by 
the white race. Many tribes of dark com¬ 
plexion belong to the white race as deter¬ 
mined by the shape of the head, hair, eyes, 
and lips. The hair is never woolly; the 
nose is large; the lips are not oblique; the 
cheek bones are small; and the features 
are regular. There are perhaps 770,000,- 
000 Caucasians, about half of the human 
race. See Population. 

Caucus, a meeting of voters to nominate 
candidates for office or to name delegates 
to a nominating convention. In American 
politics a caucus is strictly a party affair. 
It is not considered honorable to partici¬ 
pate in a caucus held by an opposing party, 
and in many states such a practice is for¬ 
bidden by law. In case a United States 
senator is to be elected it is not unusual 
for the legislative members of each party 
to caucus, that is, meet to decide upon a 








































CAUDLE’S LECTURES—CAVALRY 


candidate to be supported in formal bal¬ 
lot by the entire party strength. A nomi¬ 
nation in caucus by the prevailing party 
is almost equivalent to an election, as all 
who enter a caucus are held, according to 
political codes, to abide by the action of 
that caucus. The word is first used of 
certain gatherings of the popular leaders 
of Boston under the lead of Samuel Adams, 
to decide upon policies and candidates for 
office. Thus J ohn Adams wrote in his 
diary under date of February, 1753: “This 
day found that the Caucus Club meets at 
certain times in the yard of Tom Dawes, 
adjutant of the Boston (militia) regi¬ 
ment.” See Adams, Samuel. 

Caudle’s Curtain Lectures, Mrs., a 
series of humorous sketches by Douglas 
Jerrold. They purport to be lectures deliv¬ 
ered by Mrs. Margaret Caudle to her 
husband, Mr. Caudle, during a period of 
thirty years. The time chosen by Mrs. Cau¬ 
dle for these lectures is after they have re¬ 
tired and the curtains are drawn for the 
night. They are full of humor, and it is 
by them rather than any of his other work 
that Jerrold is known. See Jerrold. 

A CURTAIN LECTURE OF MRS. CAUDLE. 

Bah! that’s the third umbrella gone since 
Christmas. What were you to do? Why, let 
him go home in the rain, to be sure. I’m very 
certain there was nothing about him that could 
spoil. Take cold, indeed! He doesn’t look 
like one of the sort to take cold. Besides, he’d 
have better taken cold than taken our umbrella. 

Do you hear the rain, Mr. Caudle? I say, do 
you hear the rain ? Pooh! don’t think me a 
fool, Mr. Caudle; don’t insult me; he return 
the umbrella I Anybody would think you were 
born yesterday. As if anybody ever did return 
an umbrella! . . . 

There: do you hear it? Worse and worse. 
Cats and dogs, and for six weeks: always six 
weeks; and no umbrella! I should like to know 
how the children are to go to school to-morrow ! 
They sha’ n’t go through such weather, I am 
determined. No; they shall stop at home and 
never learn anything (the blessed creatures!), 
sooner than go and get wet. 

But I know why you lent the umbrella: O! 
yes, I know very well! I was going out to tea 
at dear mother’s tomorrow: you knew that, and 
you did it on purpose. How J am to go, I’m 
sure I can’t tell; but if I die, I’ll do it. No, sir; 
I won’t borrow an umbrella: no; and you sha’n’t 
buy one. Mr. Caudle, if you bring home an- 
another umbrella, I’ll throw it into the street. 


Cauliflower, a garden variety of the 
common cabbage. The name is the same 
as “coleflower.” The cauliflower head is 
really a monstrosity. The common cab¬ 
bage forms a head of closely compacted 
leaves. The head of the cauliflower con¬ 
sists of the flowering parts greatly short¬ 
ened and grown fleshy. The head is mere¬ 
ly a perverted flower-stalk—a botanical 
monstrosity. Methods of sowing, trans¬ 
planting, and cultivating are the same as 
for cabbage. The cauliflower does not 
head in hot weather. Unless grown in a 
cool locality cauliflowers should be set out 
early, to head before midsummer, or else 
they should be set out late, to head after 
the heat of midsummer has passed. Cauli¬ 
flower is not frost-proof, but the heads can 
endure ten or twenty degrees of frost if 
left standing in the garden. 

Cavalier, a term akin to cavalry. It 
was applied to the gay followers of the 
Stuarts during the great Civil War in Eng¬ 
land by way of distinction from the somber, 
austere followers of Cromwell. Their best 
side is turned toward us by Macaulay in 
his celebrated Essay on Milton: 

Thinking as we do that the cause of the King 
was the cause of bigotry and tyranny, we yet 
cannot refrain from looking with complacency 
on the character of the honest old Cavaliers. . . . 
It was not for a treacherous king or an intolerant 
church that they fought, but for the old ban¬ 
ner which had waved in so many battles over 
the heads of their fathers, and for the altars 
at which they had received the hands of their 
brides. Though nothing could be more erro¬ 
neous than their political opinions, they pos¬ 
sessed, in a far greater degree than their adver¬ 
saries, those qualities which are the grace of 
private life. With many of the vices of the 
Round Table, they had also many of its vir¬ 
tues, courtesy, generosity, veracity, tenderness, 
and respect for women. They had far more 
both of profound and of polite learning than 
the Puritans. Their manners were more engag¬ 
ing, their tempers more amiable, their tastes more 
elegant, and their households more cheerful. 

Cavalry, mounted soldiers. Cavalry as 
a military force originated, no doubt, on 
the vast treeless plains of Asia, the native 
home of the horse. The fabled centaurs 
of mythology appear to have been sug¬ 
gested to the fertile Grecian imagination 
by the incursion of horseback warriors 
from Thessaly. The ancients very gener- 



CAVE 


ally employed cavalry as an important arm 
of public service. The Assyrian horseman 
is depicted on monuments. Miriam’s song 
of rejoicing gives thanks for the overthrow 
of the Egyptian horse and his rider. Alex¬ 
ander’s cavalry was well drilled and effi¬ 
cient. The cavalry of the Romans was 
put to flight by the elephants of the Car¬ 
thaginians. The invading hordes of Gen¬ 
ghis Khan and Tamerlane overran eastern 
Europe with incredibly large bodies of 
light cavalry. The Cossacks on their wiry 
ponies, each man carrying his own means 
of subsistence, are an important part of 
the military force of Russia. 

During the Middle Ages the knight in 
heavy armor was almost useless without his 
horse. Even though archery and the in¬ 
vention of gunpowder set aside the coat 
of mail and the war-horse, modern nations 
have never ceased to regard cavalry as in¬ 
dispensable. Cromwell’s dragoons were too 
much for the English cavaliers at Marston 
Moor and Naseby. Claverhouse’s troopers 
harassed the Scottish covenanters for 
many a year. The moss trooper and the 
border raider rode mettled steeds. During 
the war of the American Revolution Mar¬ 
ion and his midnight riders had more than 
one tilt with the British horse. During 
our Civil War cavalry was used skillfully 
on both sides. Sheridan, Custer, Kirkpat¬ 
rick, Morgan, Forest, and Stuart led many 
a daring raid. The charge of Napoleon’s 
old bodyguard at Waterloo is one of the 
most dramatic incidents in modern war¬ 
fare. The charge of the Light Brigade 
at Balaklava has been immortalized by 
Tennyson. The Uhlans of the Germans 
and the French Chasseurs had many a spir¬ 
ited skirmish during the Franco-Prussian 
War. The Lancers are a crack British cav¬ 
alry regiment. 

Most of the European governments take 
pains to foster the raising of such horses 
as may be needed for cavalry service. Ger¬ 
many in particular maintains a fine estab¬ 
lishment where horses are raised for royal 
use and for sale to horse-breeders through¬ 
out the empire. 

The plains Indian has been well mount¬ 
ed for two centuries on tough ponies, 
cayuses, bronchos, or mustangs—the de¬ 


scendants of horses introduced into Amer¬ 
ica by the Spaniards. Without cavalry it 
would have been a hopeless task for the 
United States army to attempt to afford 
protection to the rancher, railway builder, 
and pioneer of the West. 

At present the authorized strength of the 
United States regular cavalry consists of 
fifteen regiments. Each regiment contains 
three squadrons of four troops each. A full 
troop consists of 100 men, but disability 
of men and horses seldom permits a dis¬ 
play of the full fighting strength of 1,200 
men per regiment. The cavalryman is pro¬ 
vided with a breech-loading carbine, a pis¬ 
tol, and a saber. His horse is equipped 
with a saddle, a bridle with a rein and a 
curb bit, a halter, a blanket, and a pair of 
saddle-bags. In 1910 the United States 
cavalry force of fifteen regiments included 
765 officers and 13,155 enlisted men. A 
cavalryman must be not less than 5 feet 4 
inches, and not more than 5 feet 10 inches 
high, with a weight not to exceed 165 
pounds. 

Cave, an underground chamber. Gen¬ 
erally speaking it may be said that soak¬ 
ing, trickling, and running waters form 
caves by dissolving and removing rock ma¬ 
terial around some crack or fissure. In 
case of sandstone the cement is dissolved, 
and the stone falls into sand easily carried 
away. In limestone caves practically the 
same action takes place. Lava caves are 
due to the action of gas. Such are found 
near Naples, and in Iceland and Hawaii. 
For a basalt cave, see Fingal’s Cave. The 
Peak cave in Derbyshire, England, is half 
a mile in length and 600 feet be¬ 
low the surface. It is noted for marble 
formations in the form of cascades and 
trees. The deepest cave known is that of 
Frederikshall, Norway, 11,000 feet below 
the surface. Many of the European caves 
contain remains of the cave dwellers, the 
cave bear, the cave hyena, and of elephants 
all well preserved in deposits of lime. One 
of the most remarkable cave regions of the 
world is the limestone basin of the Ohio 
Valley. The various passageways of Wy¬ 
andotte Cave in Crawford County, Indi¬ 
ana, have a total length of twenty-three 
miles. One stalagmite, called the Pillar 


CAVE BEAR—COUNT CAVOUR 


of the Constitution, is 75 feet in circumfer¬ 
ence and 30 feet high. Monument Moun¬ 
tain is 175 feet high; and 75 feet over¬ 
head again is a vaulted dome, so lofty are 
some of the passages. See Mammoth 
Cave; Stalactite. 

Cave Bear, an extinct bear of Europe. 
In the floors of limestone caves in various 
parts of Europe the bones of a large bear 
have been found, to which the name of cave 
bear has been given. Its bones are found 
with those of many other animals now ex¬ 
tinct. A belief is gaining ground that the 
cave bear was simply a large variety of the 
common brown bear of Europe. See Bear. 

Cave Dwellers, a name given to pre¬ 
historic peoples of whom traces have been 
found in caves of western Europe. The 
name has come to be somewhat loosely 
used, even to designate all prehistoric races 
as though all had at some time inhabited 
caves. Although this can hardly be true, 
there is sufficient evidence that a race, tall 
and of powerful build, did live, during the 
stone age, in caves and caverns of Belgium, 
France, England, Wales and Spain, and 
probably in many other places. Orna¬ 
ments, weapons, and utensils of stone, bone, 
flint, and ivory have been found, as well as 
the teeth and bones of animals, upon whose 
flesh these people probably subsisted. It is 
evident that the cave-dwellers were igno¬ 
rant of agriculture, of pottery and of 
metals, and that their manner of life was 
primitive in the extreme. See Cliff 
Dwellers. 

Cavendish, Henry (1731-1810), a dis¬ 
tinguished English scientific investigator 
of the eighteenth century. He belonged 
to a noble family. He studied at Cam¬ 
bridge, but did not take his degree. Cav¬ 
endish was a lifelong bachelor. He used 
a fortune left him by an uncle to gratify 
his tastes in chemistry. He had a fine lab¬ 
oratory in which he shut himself off from 
the world completely. He was so unwill¬ 
ing to be interrupted that even his cook 
took orders from a note left in the hall. 
Cavendish made valuable discoveries in the 
composition of air and water, and, although 
he did not get the matter quite straight¬ 
ened out, he has high rank in the history 
of the development of chemistry. In 1766 


he described inflammable air lighter than 
ordinary air, since recognized as hydrogen. 
This discovery was utilized at once in a se¬ 
ries of efforts to construct balloons. He 
held to the phlogistic theory (see article 
on Chemistry), but was puzzled to find 
that, after the outrush of “fire material” 
from substances burned in a receiver, the 
amount o*f air was diminished. 

Caviare, ka-ver', a table delicacy made 
from the roe or eggs of the sturgeon. The 
center of production is at Astrakhan, Rus¬ 
sia, where caviare is prepared in immense 
quantities from the sturgeon caught in the 
Volga River. Of late the Lake of the 
Woods, on the boundary line between 
Canada and Minnesota, has become an im¬ 
portant center of production, a company 
having practical monopoly of the immense 
number of sturgeon to be found in that 
body of water. In preparation the roe is 
washed in vinegar and dried in the sun, 
after which it is rubbed with salt and 
packed in small kegs. See Sturgeon ; 
Isinglass. 

Cavite, ka-ve-ta', a province and city in 
the southwestern part of the island of 
Luzon, Philippines. The province has a 
population*of 134,500. The town is situ¬ 
ated on an island harbor. It was the 
scene of Admiral Dewey’s victory over the 
Spanish fleet, May 1, 1898. It is now 
the naval headquarters of the United States 
in the Philippines. Population, about 
3,000. Both province and town are tribu¬ 
tary to Manila, with which there is com¬ 
munication both by water and by good 
roads. See Philippines. 

Cavour, ka-voor', Count ( 1810 - 1861 ), 
an Italian statesman. He was born and 
educated at Turin. He studied abroad, 
particularly in England. He became the 
prime minister and adviser of Victor Em¬ 
manuel, the king of Sardinia. He bears 
the same relation to united and free Italy 
that Bismarck bears to the new German 
Empire, except that his task was a more 
difficult and delicate one, and that he car¬ 
ried it to success with less sacrifice of 
honor and morality. Italy had been split 
up by France and Austria into several 
kingdoms. In point of strength it might 
be compared to a lamb with these two 



CAVY—CECROPS 


large powers snarling and ready to»devour. 
do rescue Italy from the jaws of Austria, 
without allowing it to fall into the mouth 
of France, and to unite the several petty 
kingdoms into one Italy was a difficult 
task; yet, barring the loss of Nice and 
Savoy to France, this was accomplished. 
Cavour was the statesman who planned the 
moves and formed the alliances. Victor 
Emmanuel was the man of action whose 
plume waved on the battlefield. See Italy. 

Cavy. See Guinea Pig. 

Caxton, William (1422-1491), the 
first English printer. He was a wealthy 
London silk merchant. While a commer¬ 
cial envoy at the court of Burgundy, he 
caught the book-collecting fever. Books 
had been coming from German presses for 
thirty years. In 1474, eighteen years be¬ 
fore the discovery of America, he trans¬ 
lated a History of Troy from the French 
and printed it for sale. This was the first 
book printed in England. A year later 
he published The Game and Playe of the 
Chesse. He then went into the business 
extensively at Westminster, then a suburb 
of London. Books from the Caxton press 
are the poems of Chaucer, Gower, Aesop’s 
Fables, Reynard, the Fox, a version of the 
Aeneid, Malory’s Mort d’Arthur, and vari¬ 
ous manuals for the use of the clergy, in 
all sixty-four, or, so others say, ninety- 
nine volumes. He offered his most expen¬ 
sive volumes at six pounds, about thirty 
dollars. A volume sold recently at a 
London book auction fetched $10,000. 
See Book; Printing. 

Patriarch of the English press! Stranger to 
the powers that slumber in thy craft, insensible to 
those elevated conceptions that guide the world’s 
helm, yet thy honest toil for the day and honest 
hope for the morrow shall accrue to the advantage 
of mankind continually, forever. Lad—appren¬ 
tice—mercer—retainer—hoary learner—venerable 
printer—thou, simple man, by the accident of 
time and the grace of fortune, shalt live in im¬ 
mortal memory!— Welsh. 

Cayenne (ka-en') Pepper, the pulver¬ 
ized fruit of a plant belonging to the same 
family as the ground cherry, tomato, and 
potato. It is not a pepper at all, but it 
was first imported from the port of Cay¬ 
enne in French Guiana. The proper name 
is capsicum, but under the name of “red 


pepper” it has spread from tropical Ameri¬ 
ca, and its red, peppery pods are well 
known in American gardens. The young 
pods are pickled to make Chile sauce. In 
spite of a little change in shape and color 
and a decided difference in taste, one can¬ 
not fail to see the marked similarity which 
the fruit of this plant bears to that of the 
ground cherry. See Pepper. 

Cayuse, ki-us'. See Mustang. 

Cecilia, Saint, the patroness of music, 
said to have suffered martyrdom in 230 
A. D. Her day is November 22d, and her 
name is one of the best known in the en¬ 
tire Roman calendar. She has been a 
favorite subject for poets and painters. 
Her popularity seems to be due almost en¬ 
tirely to the fact that, in the legends con¬ 
cerning her, brief mention is made of her 
using musical instruments to accompany 
her voice when praising God. The story 
is that Cecilia was a Roman maiden who, 
converted to Christianity, vowed never to 
marry. Her parents, however, promised 
her hand to a young pagan named Vale¬ 
rian. Cecilia succeeded in converting 
Valerian and he suffered martyrdom. Com¬ 
manded to sacrifice to idols, Cecilia re¬ 
fused and was condemned to die. It was 
found, however, that fire did not burn her, 
nor was the headsman’s axe able to sever 
her head from the body. A few days 
later she died and received the martyr’s 
crown. A church was erected in Rome to 
Saint Cecilia as early as the fifth century. 
She is said to have invented the organ; 
other legends recount that her music called 
an angel from heaven, who brought her 
martyr’s crown from paradise. Raphael 
and others have painted portraits of St. 
Cecilia. Chaucer, Dryden, and Pope have 
celebrated her name in poetry. Musical 
societies the world over are named for Ce¬ 
cilia, and on Saint Cecilia’s day splendid 
music is to be heard in Roman churches. 

Cecrops, se'krops, in Greek legend, the 
first king of Athens. The people of Athens 
were sometimes called Cecropidae. Ac¬ 
cording to older legends, he was half man 
and half dragon. He brought civilization 
to Greece, introducing agriculture, naviga¬ 
tion, and commerce. Later accounts men¬ 
tion him as of Egyptian origin. 


CEDAR—CELERY 


Cedar, a name applied indiscriminately 
to several evergreen trees with aromatic 
wood. The cedar of history is the cedar 
of Mt. Lebanon in Palestine. When Solo¬ 
mon purposed building a temple he sent 
his men, 10,000 a month, by agreement 
with Hiram of Tyre, to hew cedars of 
Lebanon. “Hiram gave Solomon cedar 
trees and fir trees according to all his 
desire, and Solomon gave Hiram 20,000 
measures of wheat for food to his house¬ 
hold.” Cedars of Lebanon are to be found 
about 6,000 feet above the sea level. They 
are widely branching, hospitable trees with 
limbs extending horizontally as though 
each branch and its twigs had been pressed 
flat. “The cedar spreads his dark green 
layers of shade,” says Tennyson. Cones 
four to five inches in length rise from the 
upper surfaces like candles on a Christmas 
tree. The tree grows to a height of eighty 
feet. A few fine old specimens are left on 
Mt. Lebanon with a girth of from fifty 
to sixty feet and a breadth of top nearly 
double their height. The Arabs regard 
them with the utmost reverence. The 
cedar of Lebanon is fragrant, and was 
much prized for cabinet purposes. A num¬ 
ber of fine specimens over 200 years old 
flourish in English parks, but our climate 
is too trying for them. 

The deodar of the Himalayas, “the tree 
of the gods,” from which Kipling’s Under 
the Deodars takes its name, is a genuine 
cedar. A third cedar is that of the At¬ 
las Mountains in Africa. There are but 
the three. The woods known in America 
are related, but are not genuine cedars. 
Our red cedar, so much used for the wood 
of lead-pencils, anti-moth fur chests, and 
cabinet work, has beautiful, close-grained 
red wood even more fragrant than the 
cedar of Lebanon, but it is a smaller tree 
and is known to botanists as the Virginian 
juniper. The white cedar, with loose 
shreddy bark, of our eastern swamps, much 
used for fence posts, is also a tree of 
another name belonging to the pine- 
family, and stands half way between a cy¬ 
press and a cedar. Several other trees 
commonly called cedars and cypresses are 
only near relatives. The red cedar or 
juniper, once abundant on the Atlantic 


coast, is now to be sought in Florida. The 
demand for cedar wood for lead-pencils 
and penholders has been so great that 
cedar fences seventy-five years old have 
been purchased at high prices and sent to 
the mill. * 

See Conifer; Lead-Pencil. 

Cedar-Bird. See Wax-Wing. 

Cedar Rapids, a prosperous city of 
Iowa. It is situated on the Cedar River 
which furnishes valuable waterpower util¬ 
ized in manufactories. The city is served 
by four railroads, as well as an electric line 
connecting it with Iowa City. It has excel¬ 
lent schools, an opera house, a public li¬ 
brary, a Masonic Temple, and an auditori¬ 
um. Coe College is located here. Among 
manufactures may be mentioned flour, 
cereals, starch, dairy products, furniture, 
pumps, and farming implements. There 
are also railroad and machine shops, foun¬ 
dries and pork packing establishments. 
The population in 1910 was 32,811. 

Celery, a garden vegetable belonging to 
the parsnip family. Unlike many of its 
relatives, celery is cultivated for its leaf 
stems, which are eaten with salt or used to 
flavor soups and salads. We can hardly 
call celery an article of food, though thou¬ 
sands of tons are raised under improved 
methods. Celery is on the market the year 
around. Celery grows wild in England and 
southern Europe, but it is unfit for table 
use. Garden celery originated in Germany. 
It is started and set out and cultivated not 
unlike cabbage. It does best in moist, 
peaty soil that has been ditched and sub¬ 
dued thoroughly by pulverizing and the 
addition of the plant food that is lacking 
in peat beds. 

The knack of celery cultivation lies in 
“blanching.” At the proper time the cel¬ 
ery stalks are shut off from light, either 
by means of boards, heavy paper, or by 
hilling them up with earth. As a con¬ 
sequence the celery turns white and tender 
like potato sprouts in a dark cellar. Any¬ 
one can raise celery that can raise cabbages; 
but not everyone knows how to blanch it 
successfully. Old peat swamps and skill 
have made Kalamazoo, Michigan, a noted 
celery center. In 1905, the banner year, 
Kalamazoo shipped over $2,000,000 worth 



CELESTIAL EMPIRE—CELLULOID 


of celery. During the shipping season, 
which lasts ordinarily from July to Feb¬ 
ruary, from thirty to sixty tons of celery 
are shipped daily. The reputation of Kala¬ 
mazoo as “the celery city” is due to in¬ 
dustrious Hollanders, who brought the art 
of gardening with them from their na¬ 
tive country. 

Michigan-grown celery has the highest 
reputation in the Middle West. Not all 
“Kalamazoo” celery is grown at Kalama¬ 
zoo. There are other centers. A tract of 
land fifteen miles west of Grand Rapids 
is classed as one of the most productive 
celery regions known. An old bog some 
fifteen miles long and perhaps half a mile 
wide has firm clay sides, and seemingly 
no limit as to bottom. The soil is a rich 
black muck. V. H. and Z. celery, so 
named from the three neighboring stations 
of Vriesland, Hudsonville, and Zeeland, is 
raised here. A cooperative association of 
celery raisers has been formed. There 
were in 1908, 141 members. An agent 
ships the celery in crates to Chicago whole¬ 
salers. In the year named, 35,000 crates, 
57 carloads, were shipped by freight, and 
enough more was shipped by express to 
bring the total for the year to 150,000 
cases. The price in Chicago varied from 
$1 to $1.15. From 150 to 300, and even 
as high as 500, cases are raised per acre. 

See Vegetables. 

Celestial Empire and Celestials, a 

popular term for the Chinese Empire and 
its inhabitants. 

Celibacy, the state of being unmarried. 
By common usage, the term refers primari¬ 
ly to men, but virginity is as much a state 
of celibacy as is bachelorhood. Nuns 
take a vow of perpetual virginity. Coe- 
lebs, originally meaning unmarried, has ac¬ 
quired the force of bachelor, as in Coelebs 
in Search of a Wife . Celibacy has been 
further intensified by its application to 
a single life as the result of a religious 
vow. The monks of various religious or¬ 
ders take a vow of celibacy. In the Greek 
Church celibacy is required of bishops and 
monks, but priests and deacons may re¬ 
main married if married before ordina¬ 
tion. They may not marry after ordi¬ 
nation. In the Roman Catholic church 


celibacy is enjoined upon all ranks of the 
clergy. A married man may be consecrated 
only if his wife enter a religious order. 
The position of the Roman Church is stat¬ 
ed well by a writer in the Americana: 

As no one has a right to demand to be conse¬ 
crated a priest, the Roman Church has, by this 
addition, violated no one’s right. Her position, 
therefore, is expressed by saying that, pro¬ 
foundly convinced that an unmarried clergy is 
best suited to her work, she admits to her min¬ 
istry only those who voluntarily engage to lead 
a celibate life, and as long as she finds a suffi¬ 
cient number of such candidates she refuses to 
hamper her work by the employment of others. 

Cell, the unit of structure in plants and 
animals. The lowest forms consist of a 
single cell, while the higher are aggrega¬ 
tions of cells greatly differentiated. They 
are microscopic in size, averaging not much 
over one-thousandth of an inch in diameter. 
A typical individual cell would be spheri¬ 
cal, but as built into organisms they be¬ 
come variously modified in shape. A cell 
is a thin-walled sac containing the jelly- 
like protoplasm, within which is a some¬ 
what denser portion known as a nucleus 
which in its turn contains the nucleolus. 
This protoplasm is the fundamental living 
substance by which growth is accomplished. 
In cell multiplication the nucleus plays an 
important part, the division of the nucleus 
occurring first. It is by this power of re¬ 
peated self-division that a single egg cell 
may become a highly organized plant or 
animal body. 

Celluloid, sel'u-loid, an artificial sub¬ 
stance used in the manufacture of combs, 
collars, cuffs, toilet boxes, brush handles, 
and many other fancy articles. It is made 
of cellulose, which is first converted by 
acids into the explosive guncotton. Cam¬ 
phor to give plasticity, and coloring matter 
to imitate tortoise shell, or some other sub¬ 
stance, are added, and the mixture is mold¬ 
ed by heat and pressure into the desired 
form. Celluloid is attractive, but not 
altogether safe. If touched by a live coal, 
spark, or lighted match, a celluloid article 
is likely to explode with a flash, like gun¬ 
powder. The manufacture of celluloid is 
interesting and quite simple. It is, how¬ 
ever, on account of the chemicals employ¬ 
ed, very injurious to the workmen. They 


CELLULOSE—CELTS 


are obliged to wear rubber garments and 
their faces acquire a ghastly hue. The cel¬ 
lulose, in the form of paper, is wound on 
hollow spindles carrying several hundred 
yards each. These are unwound and spray¬ 
ed with acids which convert the paper into 
guncotton. The guncotton is washed, 
ground into pulp, bleached, and dried. At 
this point, crude camphor, carefully weigh¬ 
ed, and dye, if any is to be used, are added. 
Grinding and pressing in “masticators” fol¬ 
low. The masticators are huge iron rollers, 
geared to turn inward. The mass is mix¬ 
ed thoroughly and issues from the masti¬ 
cators in the form of great inch-thick sheets, 
which are piled, one upon another, to fill a 
heavy iron box. A steam heated hydraulic 
press welds these sheets together in a solid 
cake. This great cake of celluloid is cut 
into sheets, varying in thickness from one- 
thousandth of an inch to a full inch or 
more, according to the articles for which 
they are intended. These sheets are cut, 
turned, and pressed into a variety of 
fancy articles. The small articles are cut 
from the cold celluloid, plunged into hot 
water to soften them, bent and shaped, 
and dropped into cold water to cause them 
to retain their shape. Celluloid imitates 
ivory, tortoise shell, coral, amber, and other 
materials so faithfully that experts are re¬ 
quired to detect it. 

Cellulose, sel'u-los, a substance allied 
to starch and found in plants. It is the 
principal constituent of cell walls. One 
third of all vegetable material consists of 
cellulose. It is composed of the same ele¬ 
ments, carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, that 
form starch, sugar, and alcohol, only in dif¬ 
ferent proportions. Cotton fibers are al¬ 
most pure cellulose. Linen cloth, in fact 
most fibers, are of cellulose. Soft, unglaz¬ 
ed paper is cellulose. Filter paper is of 
cellulose; so is a hornet’s nest. Young 
wood consists largely of cellulose. Fifty- 
five per cent of poplar wood consists of 
cellulose. When heated under certain con¬ 
ditions, as when wood is roasted, cellulose 
may be converted into wood alcohol. By 
treating cotton with strong nitric and sul¬ 
phuric acid the cellulose is converted into 
a powerful explosive, known as guncotton. 
Collodion is formed of guncotton dissolved 


in alcohol. By treatment with sulphuric 
acid, cellulose is also coverted into glucose, 
the basis of cheap syrup. Elder pith and 
cornstalk pith are chiefly cellulose. The 
latter is now used as an inner lining for 
the steel hull of a man-of-war. A three 
foot wall, or padding, made of corn pith 
is built inside of the steel plates. If by 
chance a shot should penetrate the steel 
plate and the pith lining, the water which 
is admitted would swell the cellulose and 
plug the shot hole. See Glucose; Alco¬ 
hol; Celluloid. 

Celsius, sel'se-us, Anders (1701-1744), 
a Swedish mathematician. He was a grad¬ 
uate of Upsala. He became a professor of 
astronomy in that institution in 1730. Later 
he traveled and studied at Nuremberg and 
Paris. Celsius was interested in lineal 
measures. He traveled to Lapland to get 
the measure of a degree of latitude. He 
was the first to propose a division of the 
difference of the temperature between the 
freezing and boiling points of water into 
100 parts. Hence the Centigrade thermom¬ 
eter is sometimes said to be constructed on 
the Celsius scale. Although Anders was 
the most celebrated member, it is worthy of 
notice that four generations of the Celsius 
family were famous as scholars, professors, 
and churchmen. See Thermometer. 

Celts, or Kelts, the earliest settlers of 
the white race in Europe. Before the dawn 
of history they appear to have been sub¬ 
dued, and incorporated or driven westward 
by succeeding waves of Germans and Sla¬ 
vonians. The Romans called them Gauls; 
they called themselves Celts. The French 
and Belgians are supposed to be largely 
of Celtic blood. At the present time, how¬ 
ever, the term is restricted to the Scottish 
Highlanders, the Celtic Irish, the Manx of 
the Isle of Man, the Welsh, the Cornish, 
and the inhabitants of Brittany in north¬ 
western France. The principal dialects are 
the Gaelic, the Erse, the Manx, and the 
Welsh. The Cornish dialect is now ex¬ 
tinct. The inhabitants of Brittany speak 
a dialect very similar to that of the Welsh. 
The English language is indebted to the 
Celts for many words, as bard, basket, bois¬ 
terous, brand, bugbear, pony, ribbon, tether, 
shamrock, flannel, mackintosh, ptarmigan, 


CEMENT—CENIS 


whiskey, Tory, spalpeen, brogue. The 
Celts are a highly imaginative people. 
Writers of Celtic blood have contributed 
largely to the bright imaginative portion 
of our literature. See Scotland ; Ire¬ 
land; Brittany; Wales; Arthur; Bo- 
adicea; Druids; Barrows; Broch ; 
Cromlech. 

Cement, a well known building materi¬ 
al. Its use was known to the Egyptians 
4000 B. C. It differs from lime in that it 
contains an additional ingredient in the 
shape of a fine clay. Hydraulic lime is 
really a cement. The most famous cement 
is made by first grinding a fine clay and a 
pure limestone or chalk into a powder, and 
then burning the mixture at a high temper¬ 
ature. It is shipped in sacks or barrels, and 
requires to be kept dry. When mixed with 
sand and water it sets or hardens, even 
under water, into a drab, stone-like mass 
resembling in color, at least, a building 
limestone much quarried at Portland, Eng¬ 
land, whence the name of Portland cement. 

This cement is entirely artificial. The 
first patent was taken out in England in 
1824, but the industry soon spread to 
France and Germany. In America the 
making of Portland cement got footing 
at Coplay, Pennsylvania, in 1878. 

The largest producing districts are now ^ 
Eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey, 
27,079,000 barrels; Illinois and Indiana, 
12,406,000 barrels; California and Wash¬ 
ington, 8,916,000 barrels; Iowa and Mis¬ 
souri, 8,477,000 barrels; Ohio and Western 
Pennsylvania, 7,704,000 barrels. 

Concrete, a mixture of sand, cement and 
crushed stone or gravel is growing in favor 
in the construction of buildings. Concrete, 
reinforced with rods of iron, is used for 
the frame work and floors. The side walls 
between the frames are usually filled with 
brick and tile. This class of construction 
was the only one that stood the test of the 
San Francisco earthquake in 1906. Con¬ 
crete is also used for walls, foundations, 
sidewalks, fence posts, bridges, etc. 

The center of the Portland cement pro¬ 
ducing industry in this country is the 
Lehigh district of Pennsylvania and New 
Jersey. In 1913 these two states produced 

a total of 27,079,000 barrels out of a total 
II-7 


of 92,000,000 barrels for the entire United 
States. The cement output of the United 
States had increased over 300% in ten 
years. 

See Brick; Pottery; Clay; Lime; 
Stucco; Plaster of Paris. 

Cemetery, as distinguished from a 
churchyard place of burial, an open, orna¬ 
mental, park-like burying ground. The 
term carries with it more or less of a 
public idea. Some churches, particularly 
the Church of Rome, and to an extent 
the Church of England, bury only in con¬ 
secrated ground. Scottish cemeteries are 
open to all. The idea of a large cemetery, 
ornamented with trees and drives, open to 
all who choose to purchase lots, has be¬ 
come quite popular, especially in connec¬ 
tion with large cities. The cemetery of 
Pere Lachaise near Paris is one of the 
most celebrated in the world. Many re¬ 
nowned Parisians lie here. Among Amer¬ 
ican cemeteries of note are Greenwood, on 
Long Island; Mount Auburn, near Bos¬ 
ton ; Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston; and 
Lakeview, Cleveland. Public cemeteries 
more or less adorned have been provid¬ 
ed by nearly all American towns and 
communities. See Catacombs ; Pere La- 
chaise. 

Cenis, se-ne', a mountain of the south¬ 
eastern Alps between southern France and 
northern Italy. It is crossed by the Mount 
Cenis Pass, 6,697 feet above the level 
of the sea. This is the route by which 
Napoleon first constructed his winding 
roadway over the mountain. In 1857 work 
was begun on a railway tunnel through 
the shoulder of the mountain. Workmen 
labored at each end. On Christmas Day, 
1870, they met in the middle of the moun¬ 
tain and found that their borings lacked 
but a few inches of being in line with 
each other. The tunnel is wide enough 
for two railway tracks. It is about eight 
miles in length and cost nearly $12,000,- 
000. Part of the expense was defrayed 
by the governments of France and Italy, 
and part by the Northern Railway Com¬ 
pany of Italy. Prior to this date rail¬ 
road communication between the two coun¬ 
tries was not practicable. See Bernard ; 
Simplon; Tunnel. 


CENSER—CENTAURS 


Censer, sen'ser, a cup in which incense 
is burned. The censer is usually suspend¬ 
ed by chains and carried in the hand. It 
is swung to and fro to create a draft and 
to spread the odor of the incense. Cen¬ 
sers of one sort or another prevailed 
among the Hebrews, the Greeks, and the 
Romans. They are now wafted before 
the altars of the Greek Church and of 
the Church of Rome, and are used, to some 
extent, by the Church of England. 

Censor, a public official whose permis¬ 
sion must be obtained to issue a newspaper, 
book, or other printed matter. During 
the Middle Ages officials of the church, 
particularly the bishops, acted as censors 
of manuscripts. Even with the Reforma¬ 
tion the practice was not at once abandon¬ 
ed in Protestant countries. The censorship 
was not abolished in England until 1693. 
At the present time a mild censorship is 
maintained in Germany. A very rigorous 
oversight is kept up in Russia. Otherwise 
freedom of the press prevails throughout 
Europe and in all civilized countries. Li¬ 
bel, treason, and other objectionable mat¬ 
ters are, of course, forbidden by law. 
The Roman censors were charged at first 
with the duties of our present assessors. 
By degrees they were empowered to direct 
people’s customs and morals. They pre¬ 
scribed what ought to be worn and what 
ought not to be worn, and were even able 
to expel a senator from his seat. 

Census, a count of the people. The 
Constitution of the United States provides 
that an actual enumeration of inhabitants 
shall be made every ten years. A census 
was taken in 1790, and one has been tak¬ 
en at the end of each succeeding ten years. 
The first census was taken by the United 
States marshals, and was little more than 
a count of the people. The compiling and 
elaborating of statistics now requires the 
employment of a permanent corps of clerks 
and a director of the census. The eleventh 
census cost nearly $12,000,000. The twelfth 
census, taken in 1900, has been publish¬ 
ed in ten large quarto volumes. The thir¬ 
teenth census was taken in 1910, but much 
of the information has not yet been com¬ 
piled and printed. In addition to statistics, 
these volumes are packed with a large 


amount of valuable historical matter rel¬ 
ative to the various domestic animals and 
the chief manufactures. 

The first census of which we have any 
historical mention is that taken of the Jews 
by David. A prejudice existed among the 
ancients against the practice. It was be¬ 
lieved that counting the people was an im¬ 
pious act likely to be punished by a visita¬ 
tion of the plague. In Sweden, England, 
and other countries, regular systems of tak¬ 
ing a census have grown out of former com¬ 
putations of parish statistics furnished by 
clergymen and others. The first regular 
English census was taken in 1800. Most 
civilized countries now take a census every 
ten years. In the United States the general 
government offers to share half the expense 
of a state census, if taken midway, that is, 
in the year ending in five, as 1905, 1915. 

See Center of Population. 

Centaurs, sen'tors, in Greek mythology, 
rude, savage monsters, half man and half 
horse. They were reputed to be descend¬ 
ants of Ixion and a Cloud. It is quite pos¬ 
sible that the myth may have been derived 
from a race of gigantic men inhabiting the 
mountains and forests of Thessaly. Their 
chief occupation, it is supposed, was that 
of hunting. Being horsemen, their raids 
and quarrels with neighboring tribes were 
conducted on horseback. This may have 
given rise to the myth current in Pindar’s 
time of savage hairy beings, half horse and 
half man. In support of this theory, it may 
be said that the Aztecs of Mexico were 
much astonished by the appearance of 
Cortez’s cavalry. Until they saw the men 
dismount, they thought that horse and 
rider constituted a two-headed animal. 
The Centaurs were admitted to social in¬ 
tercourse by the Greeks. At one time 
they were invited to a marriage, but, be¬ 
coming intoxicated, they were rude to the 
bride, and a pitched battle followed. The 
conflict between the Centaurs and the 
Greeks is a favorite subject with sculptors 
and poets of antiquity. Chiron was the 
most noted of the Centaurs. He was in¬ 
structed by Apollo and Diana in the mys¬ 
teries of medicine and music and in the 
art of prophecy. The Centaurs are repre¬ 
sented in art as having the body and legs 



CENTENNIAL ' EXHIBITION—CENTER OF POPULATION 


of a horse. The neck and head of the 
horse are replaced by the body of a man 
from the waist upward. See Chiron. 

Centennial Exhibition, a celebrated 
World’s Fair held in Fairmont Park, Phil¬ 
adelphia, May to November, in 1876. It 
was held during the one hundredth or cen¬ 
tennial year of American Independence. 
Citizens of the city of Philadelphia gave 
over $4,000,000 toward expenses to which 
the national government added $1,500,000, 
and expended $500,000 on a government 
building. Twenty-six states erected build¬ 
ings. In all over 200 separate buildings 
were arranged on the grounds. Over 50,- 
000 awards were made for excellence of 
exhibits. Forty-nine foreign countries 
made exhibits. Though surpassed by sub¬ 
sequent efforts, the exhibition was the 
greatest affair of the sort, in fact, it was 
the first great exhibition held in America. 
The skilled manufacturers of the Old 
World were well represented, and this coun¬ 
try ransacked field, forest, mine, and fac¬ 
tory to make a good showing. The exhibit 
made by Japan was a surprise. 

Americans learned a great deal from the 
articles on exhibition. Makers of pottery, 
glassware, furniture, calico, ribbons, mir¬ 
rors, wall paper, and a thousand other ar¬ 
ticles of household use began to improve 
their patterns under the influence of Euro¬ 
pean models. Printers, engravers, and 
wood finishers and makers of fine cabinet 
work were stirred up to equal or sur¬ 
pass the work seen at Philadelphia. The 
American bicycle was suggested by Eng¬ 
lish wheels. About 8,000,000 fifty cent 
tickets were taken up at the gates. Al¬ 
though the cost of the exhibition was not 
recovered directly, nor even the half of it, 
the wonderful influence exerted on the 
manufacturers, decorators, designers, art¬ 
ists, schools, and the people at large the 
awakening to the fact that America had 
so much to learn—is considered worth 
many times what the exhibition cost. 

Many eminent Europeans visited and 
participated in scientific and other confer¬ 
ences. The Bell telephone was on exhibi¬ 
tion for the first time. Machinery Hall, fill¬ 
ed with inventions, together with the min¬ 
erals and agricultural productions, woods, 


and fruits, gave European visitors respect 
for American inventive ability and for the 
future of the nation. The standing of the 
United States abroad was improved notice¬ 
ably. 

Center of Gravity, the point within a 
body at which it must be supported in 
order to balance. It is the point of appli¬ 
cation of the resultant of all the parallel 
forces representing the attraction of the 
earth for each particle of matter in the 
body. If a body is suspended from two 
points successively, the intersection of the 
lines connecting the points of support with 
the center of the earth, will give the center 
of gravity. The stability of a body de¬ 
pends upon its center of gravity being low, 
the line of direction, as above, falling well 
within the base. 

Center of Population in the United 
States. The center of population would be 
the geographical center if the country were 
peopled uniformly. When the first census 
was taken in 1790 the center of population 
was a point near the Atlantic coast twen¬ 
ty-three miles east of Baltimore. By 1800 
it had moved forty-one miles, to a point 
eighteen miles west of Baltimore. Ten 
years later it had traveled thirty-six miles 
farther westward, to a point northwest of 
Washington, D. C. During the next thir¬ 
ty years it traveled westward through West 
Virginia. In 1860 it was twenty miles 
south of Chillicothe, Ohio. In 1870 it was 
forty-eight miles east of Cincinnati, and 
in 1880 eight miles west of that city. In 
1890 it was twenty miles east of Colum¬ 
bus, Indiana, and in 1900, the center was 
located six miles southeast of the 
same city. In 1910 it had moved almost 
due west thirty-one miles, to a point four 
and a quarter miles south ofHJnionville, 
Indiana. A line joining these centers 
runs nearly due east and west. The west¬ 
ern gain varies from fourteen to eighty-one 
miles per decade. The greatest gain was 
made between 1850 and 1860; the least, 
between 1890 and 1900. During the last 
decade it moved nearly twice as far as in 
the preceding, due to the rapid growth of 
the Pacific northwest and the middle south¬ 
west. The center of the negro population, 
calculated separately, is near Rome, Georgia. 


CENTIPEDE—CERAMICS 


Centipede, sen'ti-ped, a class of ani¬ 
mals allied to insects and Crustacea. The 
centipede has a worm-shaped body of from 
6 to 200 segments, with a head distinctly 
separated from the body by a neck. Each 
segment has a pair of legs, and the head 
bears a pair of antennae. Centipede means 
having one hundred feet. The millipede, 
or thousand legged worm, differs chiefly in 
having two pairs of legs on each segment, 
a body less flattened, and shorter antennae. 
The centipede lives on insects; the milli¬ 
pede on decaying wood. Our northern 
species are harmless. The centipede is 
useful in houses. It springs upon water- 
bugs and other insects, holding them down 
with its numerous legs until it has sucked 
the life out of them. 

The California centipede is from five 
to eight inches in length. It has twenty- 
two segments—twenty-two pairs of legs. 
Each “leg” ends in a sharp point. When 
angered the animal clasps its victim, driv¬ 
ing all forty-four points into the flesh, 
stinging as if with hot needles. Boys 
mount and sell them as curiosities. 

Central America, that part of North 
America lying south of Mexico. 

Central Park, the name of a public 
pleasure ground in New York. It com¬ 
prises 840 acres. The site was purchased in 
1856 and subsequently at a cost of over 
$7,000,000. Thirty million dollars have 
been expended in converting a swampy, 
rocky district of pigsties and shanties into 
lawns, drives, fountains, and ponds. Two 
million dollars will not more than cover 
the cost alone of bringing in good soil from 
Long Island. When laid out the park was 
a northern suburb of the city, but it is now 
quite central and is a delightful breathing 
place in the New World metropolis. The 
original park contained 150,000 shrubs and 
trees, including some twenty kinds of 
maple, beech, chestnut, birch, walnut, oak, 
elm, poplar, sycamore, catalpa, etc. 
They were protected and many have now 
grown- to be fine, shady trees. The main 
drives are a lively sight on pleasant after¬ 
noons, when the gay turnouts of wealth 
and fashion pass so rapidly and in such 
numbers that one can hardly count them. 
Seats and shady walks are provided for 


foot passengers. Fine collections of palms, 
orchids, and other interesting flowers and 
plants are cared for under glass and in well 
kept gardens. Numerous dens, caveS and 
cages, tanks, and wire enclosures confine 
all sorts of birds, fishes, and wild animals, 
from a beaver to a polar bear, or a jack- 
rabbit to a giraffe. The general plan of 
the park was designed by Frederick Law 
Olmsted in 1857. It has been adhered 
to, in the main, ever since. The Metro¬ 
politan Museum of Art and the American 
Museum of Natural History are hand¬ 
somely housed in the park. Under the di¬ 
rectorship of William T. Hornaday, a col¬ 
lection of wild animals has been formed, 
scarce second to any other in the world. 

Centrifugal Force. When a body is 
swung in a circle by a string, a constant 
force must be exerted to hold it in its 
curved path. This is called centripetal 
force. The reaction to this, the tendency 
to fly off, represented by the pull on the 
string, is called centrifugal force. The 
pull increases with the weight of the body, 
the speed of rotation, or with the shorten¬ 
ing of the string. The principle of centrif¬ 
ugal force is utilized in mechanical dry¬ 
ers for laundry purposes and for the sepa¬ 
ration of liquids of different densities, as in 
the cream separator. 

Century Plant. See Agave. 

Cephalopod, sef'a-lo-pod, in natural 
history, a term applied to any mollusk be¬ 
longing to the class represented by the 
squid, cuttlefish, octopus, nautilus, argo¬ 
naut, etc. The term is Greek, meaning 
head-footed. Cephalopoda are without the 
corresponding foot or disk of the clam and 
other mollusks. Instead of this foot they 
have eight or ten arms or tentacles borne 
in a ring around the mouth. Hence the 
name. See Cuttlefish ; Squid. 

Ceramics, se-ram'iks, or Keramics, a 
word from the Greek meaning “potter’s 
earth.” It has several significations. As 
a collective term it designates objects made 
from clay, or natural earth, or from an 
artificial mixture of earths and minerals, 
and baked to insure hardness and dura¬ 
bility. In this sense the word ceramics, 
includes all pottery, porcelain, earthen 
ware, stone ware, china ware, brick, tile, 


CERBERUS—CERVANTES 


etc. The art of producing such objects 
is called also ceramics or the ceramic art, 
the oldest of all arts. 

Ceramics is a word of some dignity and 
seems to belong rather to the fine arts than 
to the useful. We find the word in most 
common use among Arts and Crafts So¬ 
cieties, Craftsmen’s Guilds and the like, 
whose members make much of the study 
of ceramics. Their work in this line is 
artistic and beautiful and is by no means 
confined to decorating pottery, but includes 
the designing of forms and the actual shap¬ 
ing of the articles. See Pottery; Clay; 
Porcelain; Brick. 

Cerberus, ser'be-rus, in the mythology 
of the ancients, the watch dog of the in¬ 
fernal regions. He is represented general¬ 
ly with three heads, the central one more 
or less human in appearance, with the tail 
of a serpent and with serpents coiled around 
his fore legs, body, and neck. See Her¬ 
cules. 

Cerebrum. See Brain. 

Cereals, a term derived from Ceres, the 
goddess of corn. Beans, peas, and lentils 
are sometimes included among the cereals, 
but, properly speaking, the term is confined 
to the flour- and meal-producing seeds of 
plants belonging to the grass family. The 
eight prominent cereals of North America 
are Indian corn or maize, wheat, rye, oats, 
barley, buckwheat, rice, and Kaffir corn. 
They furnish the larger part of human 
food. Speltz and millet may be added to 
the list. Buckwheat is not a grass, but is 
included usually because of its use as buck¬ 
wheat flour. The following tables are ar¬ 
ranged from the last United States Census 
Report and are representative: 


Grain 

Acres 

Bushels per acre 

Barley 

7,698,706 

22.7 

Buckwheat 

878,048 

16.9 

Corn 

98,382,665 

25.9 

Kaffir Corn 

1,635,153 

10.7 

Oats 

35,159,441 

28.9 

Rice 

610,175 

35.8 

Rye 

2,195,561 

13.4 

Wheat 

44,262,592 

15.4 

All Cereals 

189,822,341 


Grain 

Bushels 

Value 

Barley 

173,344,212 

$92,458,571 

Buckwheat 

14,849,332 

9,330,592 

Corn 

2,552,189,630 

1,483,553,919 


Kaffir Corn 

Oats 

Rice 

Rye 

Wheat 

All Cereals 


17,597,305 

1,007,142,980 

21,838,580 

29,520,457 

683,379,259 


4,599,861,755 


10,816,940 

414,697,422 

16,019,607 

20,421,812 

657,656,801 

$2,704,955,664 


See Agriculture. 

Ceres, se'rez, in Roman mythology, the 
goddess of grain and harvest, whence the 
term, cereal. No special myth seems to 
have been attached to her worship until the 
fifth century, when the Romans identified 
with her the Greek Demeter, introducing 
from Sicily the rites of worship performed 
in honor of the Greek goddess. They also 
adopted the Greek myths connected with 
Demeter, especially that of Persephone, 
the Roman Proserpine. See Demeter 

Cereus. See Cactus. 

Cervantes, ser-van'tes, Miguel (1547- 
lb 16), a Spanish poet and story writer. 
His parents were people of moderate means. 
He became a page in the family of a car¬ 
dinal at Rome. He served in the war of 
1570 against the Turks, and is said to 
have been held as a slave in Algiers for 
seven years. To raise money for his ran¬ 
som his father sold all his possessions, and 
his two sisters gave up their marriage por¬ 
tions. In 1580 he was thus ransomed and 
returned to Spain. He gave the rest of 
his life to literature. He is known chiefly 
as the author of Don Quixote, a two vol¬ 
ume novel that has been translated into 
almost as many languages as Robinson 
Crusoe. In Cervantes’ day Spain was 
overrun by improbable stories of knightly 
adventure which formed the theme of al¬ 
most all romances. Young and old de¬ 
voured strange tales. The effect on young 
people was a good deal like that produced 
at the present time by our yellow-backed 
literature dealing with robbers and Indians. 
Cervantes had in mind to “render abhorred 
of men the false and absurd stories con¬ 
tained in books of chivalry.” He threw 
so much ridicule on this class of writing 
that such romances became unpopular and 
disappeared from view. Don Quixote is 
a piece of brilliant caricature. Its immedi¬ 
ate influence is considered the most remark¬ 
able in all literature. Don Quixote is a 
country gentleman who sets out with his 




CETACEA—CEYLOti 


V 


squire, Sancho Panza, to see the world and 
lend a hand in its reform. One of his first 
adventures was running atilt into a wind¬ 
mill. His shiftless servant, Sancho Panza, 
and his horse, Rocinante, have a permanent 
place in literature. 

Cervantes lived for the greater part of 
his life in misery, little relieved by the suc¬ 
cess of his famous Don Quixote, which 
brought more fame than money. The 
secretary of the archbishop of Toledo, in 
his approbation appended to the second part 
of this novel, says that foreigners of dis¬ 
tinction visiting Madrid inquired first of 
all for the author of Don Quixote; that 
he was obliged to reply that “he who had 
made all the world rich was poor and in¬ 
firm, though a soldier and a gentleman.” 
A few days before his death, he entered 
the order of Franciscan friars. He died 
in poverty, but serene and cheerful, on the 
same day as Shakespeare, April 23, 1616. 
His body was buried in the convent of the 
Trinitarian nuns, of which community his 
daughter was a member. In 1633 the nuns 
moved to a new site and their dead were 
exhumed and deposited in a common os¬ 
suary or bone heap. The last resting place 
of the greatest name in Spanish literature 
is, therefore, unknown. 

See Don Quixote. 

SAYINGS OF CERVANTES. 

Live and learn. 

All in good time. 

This peck of troubles. 

As secret as the grave. 

A finger in every pie. 

Honesty is the best policy. 

The pot calls the kettle black. 

Within a stone’s throw of it. 

The proof of the pudding is the eating. 

My thoughts ran a wool-gathering. 

Why do you lead me a wild goose chase? 

Spare your breath to cool your porridge. 

SAID OF CERVANTES. 

Cervantes smil’d Spain’s chivalry away.—Byron. 

His record was as glorious and as calamitous 
as any in literary history. He was one of the 
world’s greatest benefactors whom the world 
knew not—the best of all Spaniards, the very 
type and embodiment of the highest Castilian 
nature, whom his country starved and who made 
her immortal.—Henry Edward Watts. 

Cervantes is the father of the modern novel, 
in so far as it has become a study and delineation 
of character instead of being a narrative seeking 
to interest by situation and incident.—Lowell. 


Cetacea, se-ta'she-a, warm-blooded, 

four-legged animals that have become fish¬ 
like in form. In some respects they re¬ 
semble the seal and the walrus, but they 
have become still more degenerate through 
disuse of their legs on land. It is diffi¬ 
cult to believe that a whale was origin¬ 
ally a four-legged land animal suckling 
its young; but such, scientists tell us, is 
the case. The cetacea include the various 
whalebone or baleen whales, the sperm 
whales, the dolphins, the porpoises, the so- 
called blackfish, the grampus, the killer, 
the herring hog, and the narwhal. See 
Whale; Porpoise, etc. 

Ceylon, se-lon', a large Asiatic island. 
It is a crown colony of the British Empire. 
Area, 25,332 square miles. It lies in the 
Indian Ocean. It is really a continuation 
of the peninsula of Hindustan, with which 
it is connected by a scantily covered, rocky 
reef, called Adam’s Bridge. The island 
possesses an ancient civilization, whose an¬ 
nals reach backward twenty-four centuries. 
Its ancient capital covered 256 square 
miles, and was inclosed by a wall 64 miles 
in length. It was the center of an ancient 
cult of Buddha. A sacred botree was here. 
The Portuguese colonized Ceylon in 1517. 
In 1658 Ceylon was wrested from them by 
the Dutch. In 1802 it was ceded by Hol¬ 
land to England. 

The coast is level and fertile, the in¬ 
terior mountainous, and rises to a height 
of 8,000 feet. A well built highway en¬ 
circles the entire island. Travel is inter¬ 
rupted, however, by swollen streams dur¬ 
ing seasons of inundation. Although the 
rainfall is enormous, 89 to 217 inches year¬ 
ly, the rains are confined to the short period 
of monsoons. At other seasons the drought 
is severe and prolonged. Enormous stor¬ 
age reservoirs and extensive irrigating sys¬ 
tems are necessary to save the crops. There 
are no less than 5,000 reservoirs now in 
use. Some were built 500 years before the 
birth of Christ. One modern dam is 11 
miles long and cost over $6,000,000. 
Another embankment is from 40 to 90 feet 
high for a distance of 24 miles. 

As might be expected from its latitude 
the climate of Ceylon is hot. The jungles 
are malarious. A list of the island animals 


CHAIN—CHALDEA 


includes the elephant, now protected by 
government, bears, buffaloes, monkeys, 
swine, deer, leopards, jackals, porcupines, 
flying squirrels, bats, the mongoose, and 
rats innumerable; of game birds, pheasants, 
peacocks, partridges, pigeons, and snipe are 
found. The coasts swarm with crocodiles, 
serpents, and other reptiles. Rice, tea, cof¬ 
fee, cinnamon, and cocoanuts are raised 
in abundance. The mountains yield various 
metals, including nickel, cobalt, copper, tin, 
coal, platinum, iron, and plumbago. There 
are over 3,000 gem quarries. Naturally 
enough, the bulk of the trade is with Eng¬ 
land. The great London warehouses re¬ 
ceive cargoes of Ceylon tea, cocoanut oil, 
gems, cinnamon, plumbago, rubber, cacao, 
tobacco, spices, and coffee. They send back 
cotton cloth, tools, and machinery. The 
business amounts to from $30,000,000 to 
$50,000,000 a year. 

The population in 1910 was about 4,000,- 
000, 16,000 of whom were Europeans. 
The pearl fisheries are mentioned elsewhere. 
Colombo is the capital. 

See Pearl; Irrigation. 

Chain, a series of metal links fitted into 
one another to form a line. The links are 
of many forms, elliptical being the most 
common. The size of the wire or bar 
which forms the link, the size of the sepa¬ 
rate links, the metal chosen, all depend 
upon the purpose for which the chain is to 
be used. These purposes are endless, from 
the slenderest gold chain formed of the 
finest wire, through all grades of chains 
for personal adornment or for other orna¬ 
mental purposes, up to the heaviest of steel 
and iron chains used for ships’ cables and 
for conveying power in machinery. Chains 
are made in a variety of ways. The most 
common method of making iron chains 
consists in cutting iron bars into lengths 
required for separate links then each link 
is heated to a forging temperature, shaped 
and w r elded by hand, the welding in each 
instance being preceded by the introduction 
of the adjacent link of the chain. Steel 
chains are made often by machinery, the 
steel being rolled into bars of the required 
width and thickness, and the metal cut 
away by the machine, leaving the links, 
just as one cuts away wood to leave links 


in making a wooden chain. Just as a fine 
chain is stronger in proportion to its size 
than a large one, so a fine chain, if the ma¬ 
terial and the method of making are the 
same, is proportionately stronger than a 
large one. 

Chair, a piece of furniture. The es¬ 
sential part is a seat. It also has legs, 
a back, and frequently arms. Without 
a back a chair becomes a stool. Chairs 
were known among the Romans. Richly 
carved wooden chairs are heirlooms in 
the great German houses. Nothing seems 
more common than a chair. It is safe to 
assert, however, that three-fourths of the 
world’s population do not use chairs, but 
sit on mats or on the ground, at table and 
when resting. The sense of dignity for¬ 
merly attached to the occupancy of a 
chair may be traced in the use of the 
term in connection with a professorship, as 
the chair of modern history, the chair of 
Latin, etc. The one called upon to pre¬ 
side over a meeting is said to take the 
chair. A speaker addresses the chair. 
The head of a committee is called its 
chairman. See Furniture. 

Chalcedony, kal-sed'o-ny, a precious 
stone found first in the ancient Greek town 
of Chalcedon in Asia Minor nearly op¬ 
posite Constantinople. It is an amorphous 
form of quartz, having a milky color, 
more or less clouded with veins, circles, 
and spots. It is used in the manufacture 
of jewelry. Like the agate, to which it 
is closely related, chalcedony often con¬ 
tains stains resembling bits of petrified 
moss or plants. Sometimes pebbles con¬ 
tain a drop of water. Fine specimens are 
obtained from the centers of basaltic rocks 
in Scotland, Ireland, Iceland, and the 
Rocky Mountains. A white chalcedony 
containing small blood-red spots is called 
St. Stephen’s stone. At one time chalced¬ 
ony was used much more and was more 
highly prized than at the present time. 
It was employed not only for seals and 
rings, but also for plates, cups, and vases. 
These were often engraved in the most 
elaborate manner. See Quartz ; Sand ; 
Agate. 

Chaldea, kal-de'a, in the narrow sense 
of "the word, a province of ancient Baby- 


CHALK 


Ionia, situated in the southern part of that 
country, along the Persian Gulf. In a 
broader sense, the word is used to desig¬ 
nate the whole country of Babylonia, and 
even the Babylonian Empire as it existed 
after the Conquests of Nebuchadnezzar, 
although it is more properly applied to the 
early Babylonian Monarchy. 

The earliest inhabitants of Chaldea or 
Babylonia are known as Akkadians or Ac- 
cadians. They belonged to the Turanian 
family of mankind and developed, possibly 
before their immigration into the Eu¬ 
phrates valley, the elements of civilization. 
Among them, and conquering them, came, 
not later than 5000 B. C. a nomadic people 
of the Semitic family. The gradual union 
of these races with doubtless the admixture 
of other elements resulted in the Chaldeans 
or Babylonians of history. Of the various 
districts or provinces of the region, 
Chaldea was one which through all vicissi¬ 
tudes retained to a large extent its inde¬ 
pendence. Often Chaldean kings ruled 
the whole country. ‘‘Ur of the Chaldees” 
was the capital city at an early date, and 
thus Chaldea gave its name to the nation 
and to the early civilization that developed 
in the Tigris-Euphrates basin. 

The Chaldeans were fond of peaceful 
pursuits, and dwelling in the rich alluvial 
district of the Euphrates basin were able 
to give time to something beside gaining a 
subsistence. The beginning of civilization 
made by the Accadians was turned to good 
account by the Semitic peoples. They 
adapted the cuneiform writing to their own 
language and it is believed that a large 
number of people, even the women, could 
read and write. Every city had at least 
one library of tablets and these show that 
progress was made in many of the arts and 
sciences. Various schools of literature ex¬ 
isted, and besides poetical writings the li¬ 
braries contained works on geography, 
arithmetic, geometry, grammar, astrology, 
astronomy, mythology, divination, and re¬ 
ligion. 

Although their country furnished them 
with no building stone, the Chaldeans made 
sun-dried bricks and achieved a consider¬ 
able degree of skill in architecture, which, 
however, like that of Egypt, is more note¬ 


worthy for its vast extent and its grandeur 
than for any real beauty. About 2300 B. 
C. Babylon came into prominence, succeed¬ 
ing Ur as the seat of government. The 
Kassites from Elam made conquests in 
Babylonia and the Kassite dynasty reigned 
for several centuries. In the thirteenth 
century B. C. occurred the Assyrian Con¬ 
quest. In 625 B. C. Babylonia again be¬ 
came a great power, under Nabopolassar. 
After that date the term Babylonia is more 
common than Chaldea to designate the em¬ 
pire. Chaldean quite as commonly de¬ 
scribes the ancient civilization, of both 
early and later empires, as does the adjec-. 
tive Babylonian. 

The word Chaldeans is used sometimes 
specifically to designate the learned or 
priestly class in Babylonia. In this sense 
it corresponds to Magi, or wise men. The 
story of Daniel in the Old Testament book 
of that name tells how the Chaldeans were 
called upon by Nebuchadnezzar to inter¬ 
pret a dream which he had forgotten and 
were threatened with death unless they 
should comply with the request. See 
Babylonia; Babylon; Nebuchadnezzar. 

Chalk, a soft white rock or earth. 
Chemically considered chalk is a carbonate 
of lime. It is formed under water by the 
accumulation and disintegration of tiny 
shells of myriads of microscopic animals. 
If waters are undisturbed for ages these de¬ 
posits of chalk obtain great thickness, when 
changes in the earth’s surface may bring 
them above the ocean to form part of a 
continent. The geologic period during 
which the great chalk beds were laid down 
is called the Cretaceous Age. Deep sea 
dredgings show that a fine white ooze is be¬ 
ing formed now at the bottom of the ocean 
in a way probably very similar to that in 
which chalk was formed. Chalk forma¬ 
tions usually contain fossils of seaweeds, 
sponges, corals, mollusks, fishes, and rep¬ 
tiles. 

One notable chalk deposit may be fol¬ 
lowed from Austin, Texas, southwestward 
into Mexico. One ledge, no less than 600 
feet in thickness, may be traced for 250 
miles. The best known chalk formation 
reaches from northern France into the 
southern parts of England and Ireland. 




CHALLENGER EXPEDITION—CHALLIS 


Chalk cliffs border both shores of the Eng¬ 
lish Channel. The high, white cliffs of 
Ireland, with their green carpet above, are 
the first land that greets the eye of the 
American bound for Liverpool. 

Chalk lacks the fertility of lime, but is 
used in England to dress fields deficient 
in the latter. It holds water well, mak¬ 
ing an excellent subsoil. It is much used 
in making cement, in sizing some kinds of 
cloth, and small quantities are molded into 
cylinders or crayons for blackboard use. 
The whiting used by the calciminer is a 
refined chalk. The so-called red chalk, 
the “keel” found by boys in clay banks, 
is a kind of clay stained with iron. In 
medicine purified chalk is administered 
as a remedy for an acid stomach. Such 
expressions as “chalk up,” “by a long 
chalk,” etc., arise from the use of chalk 
in keeping accounts. See Lime; Gypsum. 

Challenger Expedition, in the annals 
of science, an exploring expedition under¬ 
taken 1872-76 for the purpose of making 
deep-sea soundings. The Challenger was 
a British man-o’-war under command of 
naval officers. It carried a full equipment 
of apparatus for the investigation of ocean 
phenomena. It carried also a party of 
scientists. The good ship steamed 70,000 
miles and was gone three and a half years. 
The expedition crossed the Atlantic, by 
way of the Canaries, Madeira, and the 
West Indies, to Nova Scotia. Thence the 
route lay south to the Cape Verde Islands, 
and on around the world, via Cape of Good 
Hope, Australia, China, Japan, Chile, 
Strait of Magellan, and home to England 
again. The ocean was dredged for ooze, 
dragged with nets for fish, and sounded 
with plummets for depth. Hitherto un¬ 
known oceanic plateaus, currents, submerg¬ 
ed volcanoes, depths, and precipices were 
discovered. Thousands of specimens of 
odd animals, previously unseen by man, 
were brought up by the dredge and pre¬ 
served in glass jars. Professor Wyville 
Thompson and his assistants brought home 
an immense amount of scientific material, 
and information charts were made of the 
oceanic floor, currents, and winds. The 
fauna, flora, and life conditions of the 
deep sea were studied as never before. 


The results of the investigation were 
published, under the supervision of Sir John 
Murray, in fifty royal octavo volumes, with 
29,000 pages, 2,000 plates, and a large 
number of maps and pictures. One of the 
results is a physical map of the bottom of 
the oceans. From the top of Mount Ever¬ 
est in Asia to the bottom of Aldrich Deep 
in the Pacific Ocean is a drop of more 
than ten miles. The results of the expedi¬ 
tion also seem to substantiate the belief 
that animal life originated on land and not 
in the sea; that the sea is peopled with 
degenerate land animals; the further from 
shore and the deeper the sea, the more de¬ 
generate, sightless, colorless, and grotesque 
are the forms of life. The action of cold 
currents occasionally changes the tempera¬ 
ture of deep sea localities so remarkably as 
to kill off sea animals, which may, in such 
cases, cover the sea bottom for leagues 
with their dead bodies. 

The information gathered has been used 
freely by writers of physical geography. 
Among the results of the expedition were 
measurements of the greatest depth of the 
oceans. The depths are given in feet: 

Atlantic . 27,366 

Pacific . 30,000 

Indian . 18,582 

Arctic . 9,000 

Southern . 25,200 

Challis, shal'ly, a soft, fine, thin dress 
fabric of wool, wool and silk, or wool and 
cotton. The original challis was made 
at Norwich, England, in 1832. It was of 
silk and wool, and was of a superior qual¬ 
ity, the special characteristics being light¬ 
ness, pliability, and dull finish. Challis 
is made in plain colors or figured. The 
patterns are copied usually from French 
silk. They are tasteful and often artistic. 
They are produced in the loom or are print¬ 
ed. Cotton challis is one of the cheapest 
prints made. It is, however, soft, durable, 
and attractive in coloring. It is used large¬ 
ly for bed comforts, draperies, house gowns, 
dressing sacques, etc. All wool challis is 
quite similar to old-fashioned muslin-de¬ 
laine. It is not crumpled easily, and is de¬ 
sirable where light weight, dainty coloring, 
and graceful draping are required. See 
Delaine. 







CHALMERS—CHAMBERS 


Chalmers, Thomas (1780-1847), a 
Scottish clergyman. He was a native of 
Fifeshire, and a graduate of the University 
of St. Andrews. He entered the Presby¬ 
terian ministry and became noted as a 
pulpit orator and a writer. He did a great 
work in Glasgow in alleviating the dis¬ 
tress of the poor. In 1827 he was appoint¬ 
ed to the chair of divinity in the University 
of Edinburgh. In church affairs of Scot¬ 
land Chalmers ranks second only to John 
Knox. In 1843 he was the leader of the 
Free Church party that refused state help 
and state interference in the management of 
churches. This, of course, cost him his 
University position. He wrote a vast num¬ 
ber of tracts, sermons, and books in 
defense of Free Church principles. Summed 
up, his life may be said to have been 
devoted to practical work and to the es¬ 
tablishment in Scotland of the principle 
that church and state should be separate. 
See Presbyterians. 

Chalybeate (ka-lib'e-at) Springs, 
springs whose waters contain salts of iron 
in sufficient quantity to be of medicinal 
value. Iron is a necessary part of blood; 
therefore such waters have a beneficial ef¬ 
fect on thin blood. The presence of iron 
is indicated frequently by its giving the 
soil along the outlet a reddish tinge. 
There are two principal kinds of chalybe¬ 
ate water—carbonated and sulphated. The 
carbonated contains an excess of carbon 
dioxide. The most noted of these springs 
in this country are those of Saratoga, New 
York. There are springs of note also at 
Cheltenham, Harrowgate, Bath, and Tun¬ 
bridge, England; at Kissingen and Spa 
on the continent. The Black Forest con¬ 
tains several; others are found in Switzer¬ 
land, Corsica, and Italy. The sulphated 
water contains iron sulphate. Springs 
are found in the Isle of Wight and other 
places. See Waters, Mineral. 

Chamber of Commerce, an associa¬ 
tion of merchants and others with a view 
to promote the business interests of the 
town. Most American cities have such an 
organization. The newspapers contain 
daily items relative to their efforts in the 
line of favorable railroad rates, the estab¬ 
lishment of manufactures, the reception 


of distinguished visitors, contributions to 
sufferers from great disasters, and the like. 
A committee from a chamber of commerce 
representing the united commercial inter¬ 
ests of a city has more influence than that 
the same men exercise if acting on their 
own responsibility. This sort of associa¬ 
tion appears to have originated at Mar¬ 
seilles, in France, about 1400. It took 
definite form in 1650 and was imitated 
at Dunkirk, Paris, Lyon, Rouen, Toulouse, 
and Bordeaux. The first in Great Britain 
was organized at Glasgow in 1783 ; that 
of Manchester in 1820. The first in this 
country was established in New York as 
early as 1768. 

Chamberlain, Joseph (1836-1912), a 
prominent English statesman, born in Lon¬ 
don. His education was received in private 
schools and University College, London, 
from which he received the degrees of 
LL. D. and D. C. L. During the first of 
his political career he was a decided Radi¬ 
cal, but in 1886 opposed Mr. Gladstone, 
his chief, on the subject of Irish rule, and 
sided with the Conservatives. Previous to 
this he had served three times as mayor 
of Birmingham, and had represented the 
city in Parliament for ten years. He be¬ 
came colonial secretary in 1895, and in 
1899 found himself fully occupied with 
the Boer War. In 1903 he aroused an 
interest extending far beyond the borders 
of Great Britain, by advocating an entire 
change in England’s financial policy in¬ 
cluding a system of preferential tariffs. 
He has always advocated municipal reform 
and has been active in the betterment of 
the working classes. His seventieth birth¬ 
day, and the end of thirty years’ service 
as a member of Parliament from Birming¬ 
ham were celebrated in 1906. 

Chambers, William and Robert, two 
Scottish brothers, well known as publishers 
and writers. They were born at Peebles, 
Scotland; William, in 1800, Robert in 
1802. They both died at Edinburgh; Rob¬ 
ert in 1871, William in 1883. Robert was 
designed for the church, but his parents 
were unable to give him the necessary edu¬ 
cation. Although poor, the family pos¬ 
sessed a few books, among them a copy 
of the first edition of the Encyclopedia 


CHAMBRAY—CHAMELEON 


iBritanmca. There was also a small cir¬ 
culating library in the town. The broth¬ 
ers made all possible use of these books. 
The family removed to Edinburgh while 
the boys were still quite young. At the 
age of sixteen Robert opened a humble 
book-stall, his entire stock in trade being 
the old books which had belonged to his 
father. At the same time, his brother Wil¬ 
liam conducted a similar but distinct busi¬ 
ness elsewhere. These were the small 
beginnings of the later well known pub¬ 
lishing firm of W. and R. Chambers. 

The brothers issued penny leaflets of 
useful information for the people, written 
in a clear, pleasing style. These became 
popular, and led to the establishment by 
William in 1832 of a regular periodical, 
Chambers’s Journal. Robert soon became 
joint editor, and wrote nearly all of the 
leading articles. Traditions of Edinburgh 
was the first published work which brought 
him into general notice. Thereafter, either 
alone or conjointly with his brother, he 
wrote and compiled a large number of 
works relative to the antiquities, history, 
literature, and industries of Scotland. His 
most important works are Life of Robert 
Burns in four volumes, A Cyclopedia of 
English Literature, The Book of Days, 
and Domestic Annals of Scotland. Cham¬ 
bers’s Encyclopedia for the People was an 
outgrowth of the Journal, and was edited 
by the brothers. It is probably the best 
thing of the sort ever published. 

William Chambers, besides the work done 
in connection with Robert, published sev¬ 
eral books on various subjects. Things as 
They Are in America, American Slavery 
and Color, and France: Its History and 
Revolution are among them. Both broth¬ 
ers were remarkable men, notable examples 
of achievement in the domain of let¬ 
ters made by those with little so-called 
education, but with the natural love of 
books and learning. Robert Chambers 
said in his later years, “Books, not play¬ 
things, filled my hands in childhood.” The 
child proved father to the man. 

Chambray, sham'bra, a superior qual¬ 
ity of gingham woven in plain colors, and 
usually without pattern. The blended ap¬ 
pearance which is a characteristic of cham¬ 


bray is produced by the use of colored 
warps and white weft. Chambray is woven 
of finer yarns than ordinary gingham. A 
coarser variety is known as chambray ging¬ 
ham. When taken from the loom, cham¬ 
bray is starched heavily and calendered. 
A Jacquard chambray is a figured cham¬ 
bray produced by an arrangement which 
allows the weft to skip certain warp threads 
at regular intervals. In calendering a 
Jacquard chambray is finished by a method 
which gives it the gloss, general appear¬ 
ance and feeling of linen. See Gingham ; 
Calendering; Jacquard; Linen. 

Chameleon, ka-me'le-un, a lizard-like 
animal. The common chameleon of Eu¬ 
rope is six to eight inches long, with large, 
humpy shoulders, a thick neck, and a large 
head. One large fold of skin crosses the 
nape of the neck, another follows the spine, 
and a third takes the direction of a dew¬ 
lap. Five toes on each foot are divided 
into two groups, two pointing one way and 
three the other, so that each foot may be 
used as a hand. This arrangement, togeth¬ 
er with a prehensile tail, enables the cha¬ 
meleon to climb about the limbs of trees 
in a cautious, sluggish manner. A way 
the chameleon has of gulping, and the fact 
that it will sit for an incredible time with¬ 
out food, led the ancients to suppose it 
lived on air. This curious animal cannot 
bend its neck, but it has two prominent 
eyes that turn in every direction in a com¬ 
ical way, independently of each other. The 
eye is covered by a single eyelid, having a 
hole in the center. It is doubtful whether 
the chameleon fasts as long as is popularly 
supposed; for, on the approach of an in¬ 
sect, it shoots out a long, sticky tongue with 
incredible swiftness, and in the twinkling 
of an eye transfers the luckless insect to its 
mouth. 

The chameleon, like many other animals, 
has two differently colored layers of pig¬ 
ment, or coloring matter, in its skin. Un¬ 
der the influence of light, fear, or anger, 
or possibly at will, the color of the chame¬ 
leon changes so as to resemble a gray limb 
or green foliage as the case may be, and 
render the animal less noticeable. 

American chameleons, found in the pine 
woods from Tennessee southward to Cuba, 


CHAMOIS—CHAMPION 


are smaller active animals, grass green in 
color. They change from gray to yellow¬ 
ish, bronze, and even black. Fastened by a 
collar and a delicate golden chain, women 
wear them as ornaments. They are true 
lizards, not chameleons. 

See Lizard. 

Chamois, sham'my, an animal occupy¬ 
ing a position midway between the goat 
and the antelope. It is found in the Pyr¬ 
enees, the Alps, and in the Caucasus Moun¬ 
tains, eastward to Persia. It is about as 
large as a well grown goat, but it is some¬ 
what lighter and more graceful in struc¬ 
ture. The general color is brown, with a 
/pale yellowish head and a black tail. Two 
black horns, four or five inches in length, 
have straight shafts, and are recurved at 
the point until the tip points directly 
downward. The chamois is best known in 
the Alps, where, however, it has been hunt¬ 
ed so persistently that the few remaining 
specimens are protected by law. It lives 
above the timber line in summer, but de¬ 
scends with its fawn into the upper forests 
for the winter. 

The chamois is a remarkably agile, sure¬ 
footed animal, and can leap a wall twice 
the height of a man’s head with the utmost 
ease, or spring across a chasm fifteen feet 
in width without apparent exertion. It 
can also rise out of a chasm or descend 
to the bottom of one by a peculiar series 
of leaps. It stands with its body parallel, 
that is, with its sides to the faces of the 
chasm, and, by a series of side bounds, 
plants its flinty hoofs, first against one face, 
then against the other face, of the rock 
back and forth, thus rising to the top 
or descending to the bottom of a deep cleft 
without the least inconvenience. Through¬ 
out the series of jumps the body is held 
easily rigid. All four hoofs are flung out 
first on one side, then on the other, against 
the opposing rock without the least appear¬ 
ance of effort or embarrassment. Should 
a ledge be encountered wide enough, the 
chamois pauses, feeds, and resumes its up¬ 
ward or downward trip. By this method 
of bounding from surface to surface, a 
chamois can scale the inner angle of a gar¬ 
den wall. 

See Goat ; Antelope. 


Chamouni, sha-mob-ne', a picturesque 
vale in Switzerland. Politically it lies in 
Savoy, a province of France. Geographic¬ 
ally it is a part of the upper valley of 
the river Arve. It is about twelve miles 
in length. It runs toward the southwest. 
Mount Blanc towers on one side, and a 
lofty, precipitous mountain bounds it on 
the other. The name is derived from the 
chamois or wild goat. The valley receives 
several glaciers, chief among which is the 
noted Mer de Glace, or sea of ice from the 
shoulder of Mount Blanc. The village of 
Chamouni, magnificently situated in full 
view of the great mountain, has a large 
summer population of tourists. In the 
winter the natives, about 2,500 in number, 
settle down to spinning, toymaking, carv¬ 
ing, preparing alpenstocks, and getting 
ready in other ways for a summer tourist 
trade. The soil of the valley is scanty, 
but is carefully tilled. Colonies of bees 
gather mountain honey. See Blanc; 
Switzerland. 

Champs Elysees, shon'za-le-za', a cele¬ 
brated public park and promenade in Paris. 
It is on the north bank of the river and ex¬ 
tends from the Place de la Concorde to the 
Place de l’Etoile. The avenue is lined 
with beautiful trees and fine buildings. 
The name means Elysian fields. See 
Paris; Elysium. 

Champagne, sham-pan', an ancient 
province of France. Its frontier lies east 
of Paris at a distance of perhaps fifty 
miles. It was incorporated with France 
about 1361. Troyes was its capital. It is 
celebrated for the sparkling red and white 
wines of the name, especially those pro¬ 
duced on the banks of the Marne. Grow¬ 
ers press four and one-half pounds of 
grapes to a quart of champagne. By a 
law of France the name champagne is. re¬ 
stricted to wine produced in a district of 
about forty-five square miles in the imme¬ 
diate vicinity of Rheims. See Wine; 
Rheims ; Burgundy. 

Champion, one who takes up the cause 
of another. During the Middle Ages one 
accused of foul crime had the right of 
trial by combat. He could fight for him¬ 
self, or be defended by a champion who 
fought for him against the accusing party 



CHAMPLAIN—CHANNEL ISLANDS 


or representative of the accuser. The prac¬ 
tice was sanctioned by the church, the the¬ 
ory being that a weak arm was nerved and 
a strong arm made stronger by a sense of 
right, and that the God of Battles would 
not suffer the wrong to prevail. A thrill¬ 
ing account of this practice may be found 
in Scott’s Ivanhoe. Rebecca, the beautiful 
Jewess of York, was accused of sorcery. 
Wilfred of Ivanhoe, wounded and faint, 
rode into the lists amid cries of “A cham¬ 
pion ! A champion!” Sir Brian de Bois 
Guilbert, a powerful knight, likewise in 
full armor and superbly mounted, took his 
station at the other end of the lists. The 
herald summoned them thrice to do their 
duty. The Grand Master dropped the 
glove and said, “Let go.” The knights 
charged like thunderbolts. Their lances 
struck fair. The foul Bois Guilbert reeled, 
fell from his saddle, died of apoplexy, 
“a victim to the violence of his own con¬ 
tending passions.” Rebecca was saved. 
As these trials did not have always a nov¬ 
elist to bring them to a righteous issue, 
we must believe that much injustice was 
done by the strong to the weak. See Or¬ 
deal. 

Champlain, Samuel de (1570-1635), 
a French soldier and explorer. He was 
born in France and died at Quebec. He 
served under the French flag in the West 
Indies and Mexico. In 1603 he began the 
exploration of the St. Lawrence. In 1608 
he founded Quebec, and in the following 
year discovered the lake which bears his 
name. He spent his life in the service of 
France, fighting the Iroquois, fortifying 
Quebec, locating settlers, and developing 
the fur trade of New France. 

Champlain (sham-plane') Lake, a 
beautiful body of water lying between 
Vermont and New York. It lies 90 feet 
above the sea. It is about 110 miles in 
length and is from 10 to 12 miles in width 
at the northern end. It discharges its 
waters northward, through the Richelieu or 
Sorel River, into the St. Lawrence. The 
lake is studded with half a hundred islands, 
which, with numerous wooded promontories, 
form attractive resorts and places of sum¬ 
mer residence. The waters abound in fish. 
Numerous steamers ply on .the lake. Bur¬ 


lington is the chief port. The lake was 
discovered by Samuel Champlain in 1609. 
It formed part of the great canoe way be¬ 
tween the St. Lawrence and the Hudson. 
The old portage is now cut by a canal. 
In 1776 the British defeated an American 
flotilla under Arnold. Burgoyne advanced 
up Lake Champlain to invade New York 
September 11, 1814. Captain McDonough 
with a small force met and defeated a 
squadron of sixteen British ships, carry¬ 
ing 96 guns and 1,000 men. The engage¬ 
ment took place near Plattsburg, and gave 
the Americans encouragement when they 
were in sore need of it. Of many writers 
who have dwelt on the scenery of the lake 
James Fenimore Cooper may be mentioned 
as the earliest. 

Changeling, a child left in place of an¬ 
other. During the Middle Ages there was 
a popular superstition that the fairies were 
likely to take away a babe and place their 
own in its stead. The more vigorous a 
young child, the more likely the fairies 
were to desire it. The exchange might 
be made any time before the christening. 
Young babes were watched, therefore, 
closely, until that ceremony had been per¬ 
formed. A stunted, dwarfed, crippled, or 
underwitted child was believed commonly 
to be a changeling. Spenser speaks of 
changelings changed by “faeries’ theft.” 
The term is employed frequently by the 
British poets. Lowell, who lost a little 
daughter, uses the idea beautifully. He 
speaks of the memory of his little child 
as though it were a changeling left in its 
place by the angels. 

This child is not mine as the first was, 

I cannot sing it to rest, 

I cannot lift it up fatherly, 

And bless it upon my breast; 

Yet it lies in my little one’s cradle, 

And sits in my little one’s chair, 

And the light of the heaven she’s gone to 
Transfigures its golden hair. 

Channel Islands, a group of small 
islands in the English Channel ten miles 
off the coast of France. Area, 75 square 
miles. Population, 95,841. The princi¬ 
pal islands are Alderney, Jersey, and 
Guernsey. They are famous for the fine 
dairy cattle bearing their names. The 
group was a part of French Normandy 


CHANNING—CHANSON DE ROLAND 


It came into possession of England with 
William the Norman at the time of the 
Norman conquest. England afterward 
lost the mainland of Normandy, but has 
retained these islands. The people still 
speak French, but are for the most part 
able to speak English. The islands have 
been permitted wisely to retain their old 
local forms of government and appear to 
have cared little who ruled the outside 
world. The Channel Islands are not 
bound by acts of Parliament unless spe¬ 
cially named in them. The inhabitants are 
a hardy race of sailors and fishermen, with 
simple virtues such as are ascribed to the 
French settlers of Acadia in Longfellow’s 
Evangeline. See British Empire. 

Charming, William Ellery (1 7 8 0 - 
1842), an American clergyman. He was 
a native of Newport, Rhode Island, and 
a graduate of Harvard College. He stud¬ 
ied medicine, taught in Virginia, took up 
theology, and entered upon his first charge 
at Medford, Massachusetts. He preached 
his first sermon from the text, “Silver and 
gold have I none, but such as I have give 
I thee.” In 1803 he had a call to Boston. 
In 1819 he preached a famous sermon in 
which he announced two articles of belief. 
He declared the Bible to be “a book writ¬ 
ten for men, in the language of men, and 
its meaning to be sought in the same man¬ 
ner as that of other books.” He also de¬ 
clared his belief that Christ was a great 
moral teacher; no more, no less. This 
made him the recognized leader of the Uni¬ 
tarian movement in New England, a posi¬ 
tion which he held until his death. He 
was also an earnest advocate of the abo¬ 
lition of slavery, supporting the views of 
Garrison. He was a man of wide read¬ 
ing and a fine writer. His life was simple 
and fearless. He was a man of unaffected 
piety. He was respected thoroughly, 
even by those who could not accept his 
views. Coleridge said of Channing, “He 
has the love of wisdom, and the wisdom 
of love.” A bronze statue of Channing 
stands in the public garden in Boston, 
opposite the church of which he was long 
a pastor. See Unitarians. 

Channing, William Henry (1810- 
1884), an American clergyman. He was 


born in Boston, graduated from Harvard 
in 1829, entered the Unitarian ministry, 
preaching with much success in several 
American cities. He was a fine extempora¬ 
neous speaker. Later he settled in England 
as pastor of Hope Street Chapel in Liver¬ 
pool. He was for two years chaplain of 
the Senate at Washington, but after the 
Civil War resided continuously in Eng¬ 
land. He published Memoirs of Dr. Wil¬ 
liam Ellery Channing, Life and Writings 
of James H. Perkins, and, in connection 
with Ralph Waldo Emerson and James 
Freeman Clarke, Memoirs of Madame Os- 
soli. 

To live content with small means—to seek ele¬ 
gance rather than luxury, and refinement rather 
than fashion—to be worthy, not respectable, and 
wealthy, not rich—to study hard, think quietly, 
talk gently, act frankly—to listen to stars and 
birds, to babes and sages, with open heart—to 
bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occa¬ 
sions, hurry never. In a word, to let the spir¬ 
itual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through 
the common. This is to be my symphony.—• 
William Henry Channing. 

Chanson de Roland, shon-son' de ro- 
lon', a French epic poem of medieval 
times. This poem seems, like other folk- 
epics, to be a collection or composite of 
popular songs. The Chanson de Gest 
(shon-son' de zhest), literally song of he¬ 
roic deeds, was a special form of narra¬ 
tive poem popular in France during the 
eleventh and twelfth centuries, correspond¬ 
ing to the ballads of old England. These 
songs were sung or recited by trouveres or 
minstrels. The Chanson de Roland is a 
cycle of these songs celebrating the heroic 
exploits of Charlemagne, and giving es¬ 
pecially the story of Roland’s death at 
Roncesvalles in 778, and the revenge taken 
by Charlemagne upon the Saracens. The 
French poem contains over 4,000 lines. 
This song of Roland, as the epic is com¬ 
monly called, was the most popular hero¬ 
ic song of the Middle Ages. When on his 
way to conquer England William the Con¬ 
queror had parts of it sung at the head of 
his troops for the inspiration of his sol¬ 
diers. The gathering together of this cy¬ 
cle of songs is accredited to Turoldus, a 
Norman trouvere of the eleventh century. 
Many of the songs date probably from a 
time little later than the event of Roland’s 


CHAOS—CHAPULTEPEC 


death. See Roland; Epic; Trouvere; 
Ballad. 

Chaos, ka'os, in ancient mythology, 
that vast, infinite space out of which all 
things spring. “In the beginning,” say 
the Scriptures; “Out of Chaos,” say the 
Greek writers. The Roman Ovid repre¬ 
sents chaos as a confused, shapeless mass 
out of which the universe or cosmos took 
shape. According to the Greek Hesiod 
Chaos was the mother of Erebus and Nox, 
darkness and night. Milton is fond of 
coupling night with chaos. Both quota¬ 
tions are from Paradise Lost: 

The universal host up sent 
A shout that tore hell’s concave, and beyond 
Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night. 

Where eldest Night 
And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold 
Eternal anarchy. 

See Mythology. 

Chap Book, a rudely gotten up tract 
or pamphlet, such as was formerly sold 
by a chapman or peddler. The term chap, 
or cheap, originally meant a market, or 
fair. A chapman was one who sold arti¬ 
cles at a public market, or cheap. Cheap 
wares were such inexpensive articles as 
were vended at the cheap. A chap book, 
therefore, is a market book, such as a mar¬ 
ket man might find suitable for rustic 
trade on a fair day. These chap books 
were at one time the only popular litera¬ 
ture. They were printed in broad-faced, 
black type, adorned with a few rude wood- 
cuts. They were printed on a single sheet 
of the coarsest paper and folded into twen¬ 
ty-four pages. They covered a vast range 
of subjects, including religious tracts, the 
lives of heroes and martyrs, dreams, for¬ 
tune telling, almanacs of the weather, sto¬ 
ries of giants, ghosts, hobgoblins, witches, 
notable events in history, ballads, and 
songs. They sold usually for a penny. 
They went out of fashion over a century 
ago. Being unbound they have become 
very scarce. They now command a large 
price as rarities. See Book; Printing. 

Chapman, George (1557-1634), an 
English poet and dramatist. He studied 
both at Oxford and at Cambridge. Little 
is known of his history except that he went 
to London while a young man, was a 


friend of Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Ed¬ 
mund Spenser, and, it is supposed, held 
some office in connection with the court. 
His first poem, so far as is known, was 
published in 1594. From that time on, 
he produced many dramas, both comedies 
and tragedies; many poems, and, of more 
importance, many translations of classical 
works. Chapman was the earliest, and is 
regarded by many critics as the best, Eng¬ 
lish translator of The Iliad and The Odys¬ 
sey. He was associated with Jonson and 
Marston in the production of Eastward 
Ho, which satirized the Scotch in such 
a manner as to incur the resentment of 
James I. Chapman and Marston were 
imprisoned and Jonson voluntarily shared 
their confinement. Among Chapman’s 
comedies may be mentioned The Blind Beg¬ 
gar of Alexandria, and among tragedies 
Caesar and Pompey, Revenge for Honor, 
and two dramas on the life of Marshal 
Biron, which Swinburne characterizes as 
“a storehouse of lofty thought and splen¬ 
did verse, with scarcely a flash or sparkle 
of dramatic action.” 

QUOTATIONS FROM CHAPMAN. 

Man is a torch borne in the wind; a dream 
But of a shadow. 

An ill weed grows apace. 

They’re only truly great who are truly good. 

Young men think old men are fools; but old 
men know young men are fools. 

’T is good to be merry and wise. 

Enough ’s as good as a feast. 

Make ducks and drakes with shillings. 

ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN’S HOMER. 

Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold, 

And many goodly states and kingdoms seen ; 
Round many western islands have I been 
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. 

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told 
That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne : 
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene 
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: 
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies 
When a new planet swims into his ken. 

—Keats. 

“Chapman was a wise, manly, but irregular 
genius, greater as a translator of Homer than as 
a dramatist.” 

Chapultepec, cha-pool-te-pec', a rocky 
eminence about three miles from the city 
of Mexico. The name is said to be Aztec 
for “grasshopper hill.” It rises about 150 


CHARADE—CHARCOAL 


feet above the surface. It was the county 
seat of the Aztec emperor Montezuma. A 
cypress grove at the western foot may yet 
be seen. The rock was fortified by the 
Spaniards. It was occupied by the Mexi¬ 
cans as a military academy, and was de¬ 
fended by a garrison. At the approach 
of the war between the United States and 
Mexico Chapultepec was relied upon to 
protect the road to the city from that quar¬ 
ter, and was defended pluckily by a gar¬ 
rison. It cost our. invading army under 
General Winfield Scott three days and 863 
killed and wounded to invest and take 
the place. The engagement took place 
September 12-13, 1847. Among the Amer¬ 
icans engaged in planting batteries, pio¬ 
neering, and scaling were many young 
soldiers whose names are well known. 
Some of these are Mayne Reid, George 
B. McClellan, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall 
Jackson, Raphael Semmes, Joseph E. 
Johnston, and James Longstreet. 

Charade, sha-rad', a sort of punning 
enigma. A word is chosen. Usually each 
syllable or letter is described in verse or 
prose as enigmatically as possible, and 
finally the whole word is described. A few 
examples may serve to make this description 
clear: 

My first is company; my second shuns com¬ 
pany ; my third collects a company; my whole 
amuses company. 

Answer. Co-nun-drum. 

I am composed of four letters. My last is 
equal to my whole and my whole is nothing at 
all. 

Answer. Zero. 

My first is an article of furniture ; my second 
is a grain ; my third is what we all want. My 
whole is one of the United States. 

Answer. Mat-ri-mony. 

Some one threw my first and second at my 
third, but it did not hurt me for it was only a 
branch of my whole. 

Answer. Mistletoe. 

Of another sort is the acted charade. 
The players choose a word and act each 
syllable, or group of syllables, and finally 
act the entire word. The company endeav¬ 
ors to guess the word. Amost any device 
as dialogue, allusion, quotation, story tell¬ 
ing, posing, and punning, is permissible. 
Words like catalog, Massachusetts, mando¬ 
lin, Friday, Cinderella, antimony, silicate, 


sentinel, century, sirup, etc., are adapted to 
the purpose. Accurate syllabication is not 
insisted on. No twisting of meaning is con¬ 
sidered too far-fetched for parlor charades. 
Sirup, for instance may be represented 
by a man standing on a chair (sir up). 

Charcoal, a form of carbon obtained 
by burning vegetable or animal matter with 
a smothered fire. The bits of coal-black 
charred wood found in the ashes of a wood- 
stove or a campfire are charcoal. When we 
say a lamp is smoking, it is producing char¬ 
coal. Stir up a fire so that no bits of wood 
are smothered in ashes, and we shall have 
no charcoal. Supply more air, or turn 
down the wick so that oil will not come 
too fast for the air, and the lamp will 
cease to smoke; that is it will stop pro¬ 
ducing charcoal. 

Wood-charcoal is hard and brittle and 
rings like a metal. It cannot be melted, nor 
dissolved in water. It burns without flame. 
It is not subject to decay. Many farmers 
char the lower ends of their fence posts 
to keep them from rotting off. Wood 
charcoal is one of the ingredients of gun¬ 
powder. It has the power of absorbing dis¬ 
agreeable odors and is used as a disinfect¬ 
ant. It makes an excellent powder for the 
teeth, and is much used in filters, as it al¬ 
lows the passage of water but arrests for¬ 
eign substances. Wood charcoal is in de¬ 
mand for fuel, and for blacksmith fires. 
Without doubt, Longfellow’s “Village 
Blacksmith” used charcoal. It is indis¬ 
pensable in smelting certain metals. Ow¬ 
ing to its powers of absorption, it is some¬ 
times given as a remedy. Charcoal crayons, 
obtained by charring splinters and twigs 
of willow, are used by artists in making 
sketches. 

Wood charcoal is produced in merchant¬ 
able quantities by means of regular char¬ 
coal ovens, but the simplest and most wide¬ 
ly used method is that of the charcoal 
burners. Split wood is stacked on end to 
form a round, pointed pile, like a cone 
or Indian’s tepee. The pile is then banked 
or covered almost to the very tip with sods 
and earth or wet.ashes to keep the air out. 
Holes are left here and there in the bank¬ 
ing to admit some air. The wood is then 
fired at the very tip of the pile, and the 


CHARING CROSS-CHARIVARI 


fire is allowed to eat its way down the cen¬ 
ter and from the center toward the out¬ 
side. The charcoal burner remains in 
constant attendance, but can tend a number 
of pits at the same time. He watches the 
issuing of the smoke with concern. As 
long as a thick, white smoke comes out, all 
is going right. If the smoke grows thin, 
or blue, the fire is burning too vigorous¬ 
ly and is doing its work too well. He 
must close up some of the air vents or pile 
ashes on the peak to smother the fire. After 
he judges that the firing has proceeded 
long enough, several days perhaps, the 
burner closes up all the vents and the peak 
with ashes or earth, and leaves the pile 
to smolder and cool. Judgment and ex¬ 
perience are needed to burn charcoal. If 
the air is shut out too closely the fire may 
go out, and then must be rebuilt. If the 
fire gets under headway for an hour the 
pit may burn out and the work of weeks 
be reduced to ashes. The whole secret of 
the process lies in the fact that, of the 
different elements that go to make up 
wood and oil, carbon is the last to take 
fire. The other elements fly into gas and 
are consumed before carbon is ignited at 
all. If a fire be smothered skillfully, so 
as to produce the right degree of heat and 
the right amount of combustion, the car¬ 
bon is left behind as charcoal. Oak, ash, 
maple, beech, pine, elm, chestnut, and syca¬ 
more are largely used by the burners. A 
cord of wood burned skillfully yields about 
thirty bushels of charcoal weighing fifteen 
pounds to the bushel. 

Lampblack is a form of finely divided 
charcoal, obtained by catching the dense 
black smoke from half-smothered flames 
of oil lamps. The smoking lamps are placed 
in a specially constructed chamber beneath 
sacking on which the lampblack settles. 

Boneblack is made from fresh bones 
crushed into fragments, and subjected to 
the right degree of heat in earthenware 
retorts. Boneblack is used as a filter; liq¬ 
uids passing through it give up their color. 

See Gunpowder; Carbon; Diamond; 
Coal. 

Charing Cross, an intersection of 
streets at the southern side of Trafalgar 
Square near the Thames. This busy spot 
II-S 


is considered the geographical center of 
London. Distances are reckoned from it. 
The village of Charing formerly stood 
here. When Edward I was conveying his 
queen Eleanor’s remains to Westminster 
Abbey, he erected a memorial cross at each 
stage where the bier rested. This is tra¬ 
ditionally one of the spots. A new cross, 
however, was erected in 1863. Charing 
Cross railway station stands in the vicin¬ 
ity. The street called Strand runs east¬ 
ward to join the Fleet. Whitehall Street 
leads to Parliament House and Westmin¬ 
ster Abbey, and the Mall leads westward 
by St. James Park to Buckingham Pal¬ 
ace. See London. 

Chariot, a historic vehicle consisting of 
a low axle, two wheels, a pole, and a box 
open behind. The driver stands in the 
box and guides his steed. The ancient 
Egyptians and Assyrians understood the 
making of elaborate chariots with spoked 
wheels, as depicted on their monuments. 
Achilles tied the body of Hector to his 
chariot and dragged it about the walls 
of Troy. The Egyptians pursued the chil¬ 
dren of Israel with chariots. Strong blades 
or knives were affixed to the wheels of war 
chariots to cause havoc in the ranks of 
the enemy. Chariot races were a favorite 
amusement among the ancients. A spirit¬ 
ed account of such a race is given by Lew 
Wallace in Ben Hur. See Carriage. 

Charivari, sha-re-va-re', colloquially 
chivaree, a mock serenade. The name, as 
well as the custom, originated in France. 
The rustic charivari was introduced into 
the United States, and is still prevalent 
in some sections as an attention bestowed 
upon newly married couples. Drums are 
beaten, tin pans rattled, and whistles are 
blown, with shrieks, yells, sometimes firing 
of guns, and every other discordant ele¬ 
ment. While such attention may hardly 
be said to be agreeable, yet a large and 
enthusiastic charivari is by no means looked 
upon as a sign of unpopularity. Its ab¬ 
sence in some sections would be regarded 
as a social slight. After the noise has 
proceeded long enough to serve the pur¬ 
pose of courtesy the serenaders are invited 
in to partake of refreshment provided for 
the occasion. The custom has been discon- 


CHARLEMAGNE 


tinued so generally, however, that it has 
come to be looked upon as wanting in re¬ 
finement. The term is also applied to 
noisy, insulting demonstrations directed 
against some obnoxious person. This, 
however, not in the United States. 

Charlemagne, shar'le-man (742-814), 
or Charles the Great, king of the Franks. 
He was born at Aix-la-Chapelle. He died 
and was buried there, yet he was a great 
traveler. He is the foremost historical 
figure, the greatest doer of things, in sev¬ 
eral centuries. He inherited the kingdom 
of the Franks from his father Pippin, who 
had displaced the Merovingian kings by 
papal consent in 750. He extended the 
bounds of his territory until it included 
the greater part of western Europe. 
The seat of the Roman Empire had been 
at Constantinople for centuries, and the 
West had fallen away. He revived 
the notion of a western empire which 
should be independent of the Greek gov¬ 
ernment at Constantinople. Pope Leo 
favored the idea and placed the imperial 
diadem on his head in St. Peter’s basilica 
at Rome, crying aloud, “To Charles Au¬ 
gustus, crowned by God, great and pacific 
emperor, life and victory.” This corona¬ 
tion took place in 800. It gave the West 
the idea of a great empire corresponding 
to a great church. Wherever the banners 
of the empire floated the church should 
find protection. Wherever the doctrines of 
the Roman Church were accepted the au¬ 
thority of the empire should be recognized. 
Pope and emperor; emperor and pope; the 
holy Catholic church; the holy Roman 
Empire; state and church hand in hand. 
This was the beginning of modern Euro¬ 
pean history. The notion of the empire 
was at times the controlling political idea 
in Europe. It persisted until abolished by 
Napoleon with whose ambitions it con¬ 
flicted. 

During his reign of forty-six years Char¬ 
lemagne made fifty-two military cam¬ 
paigns. He routed the Saracens in north¬ 
eastern Spain; won the iron crown of the 
Lombards; converted the Saxons with the 
combined arguments of war and Christian¬ 
ity as far as the Elbe and the Baltic, and 
subjugated the Huns in the valley of the 


Danube. The sword of Charlemagne and 
the cross of the monk were inseparable. 
Wherever the banner of the empire was 
planted monasteries were built and the 
voices of monks rose in morning prayers. 

Nor were schools neglected. Charle¬ 
magne’s capital and favorite place of resi¬ 
dence was Aix-la-Chapelle. Here he built 
a magnificent palace and a noble marble 
cathedral or “chapelle” which gave its name 
to the city. Schools were established 
throughout the empire for the training of 
priests, and at his own home he established 
what was known as the palace school for 
the young people, the sons of nobility who 
flocked to his court. 

Charlemagne was a large man in every 
way. He fought like a lion, but it was to 
establish peace. He sought power, but it 
was to use it justly. He extended and 
strengthened his government, but it was 
for the benefit of the people. He favored 
education, not ignorance; art, not idle 
luxury; comfort and plain living, not ex¬ 
travagance. Scholars were encouraged to 
live at court. Pacific, courageous, kindly, 
determined, industrious, quiet, scholarly, 
largehearted, and merciful, in many ways 
like King Alfred, it is safe to say that had 
his successors been more like him the 
step of Europe might have been hastened 
a couple of centuries. At his death part 
of his work went backward. When he died 
in 814, he was embalmed, seated in corona¬ 
tion robes on a golden throne in a marble 
tomb in the gallery of the cathedral. A 
crown was placed on his head; a sword 
was placed in his hand, and an open vol¬ 
ume of the Scriptures was laid on his lap, 
signifying the great ruler, conqueror, law¬ 
giver, patron of learning and the son of 
the church. In the year 1000 Otho III 
opened the tomb. In 1165 Frederick Bar- 
barossa opened it a second time, and trans¬ 
ferred the remains to a marble sarcophagus. 
In 1215 the remains were inclosed in a 
gold and silver chest or reliquary, where 
they rest, with other precious treasures, in 
the sacred precincts of the cathedral. 
Charlemagne’s crown, sword, scepter, coro¬ 
nation robes, and gloves are preserved in 
the imperial treasury at Vienna. 

See Aachen. 




CHARLEMAGNE 


CHARLEMAGNE, THE MAN. 

Charles was large and robust, of commanding 
stature and excellent proportions, for it appears 
that he measured in height seven times the length 
of his own foot. The top of his head was round, 
his eyes large and animated, his nose somewhat 
long. He had a fine head of gray hair, and his 
face was bright and pleasant; so that, whether 
standing or sitting, he showed great presence 
and dignity. Although his neck was thick and 
rather short, and his belly too prominent, still 
the good proportions of his limbs concealed these 
defects. His walk was firm, and the whole 
carriage of his body was manly. His voice was 
clear, but not so strong as his frame would have 
led one to expect. 

He took constant exercise in riding and hunt- 
ing, which was natural for a Frank, since scarce¬ 
ly any nation can be found to equal them in 
these pursuits. He also delighted in the natural 
warm baths, frequently exercising himself by 
swimming, in which he was very skillful, no one 
being able to outstrip him. It was on account 
of the warm baths at Aix-la-Chapelle that he 
built his palace there and lived there constantly 
during the last years of his life and until his 
death. . . . 

Fie wore the dress of his native country, that 
is, the Frankish; next his body a linen shirt and 
linen drawers ; then a tunic with a silken border, 
and stockings. He bound his legs with garters 
and wore shoes on his feet. In the winter he 
protected his shoulders and chest with a vest 
made of the skins of otters and sable. He wore 
a blue cloak, and was always girt with his 
sword, the hilt and belt being of gold and silver. 
Sometimes he wore a jeweled sword, but he did 
so only on great festivals or when receiving 
foreign ambassadors. 

He thoroughly disliked the dress of foreign¬ 
ers, however fine; and he never put it on ex¬ 
cept at Rome—once at the request of Pope 
Adrian, and again, a second time, to please 
Adrian’s successor. Pope Leo. He then wore a 
long tunic, chlamys, and shoes made after the 
Roman fashion. On festivals he used to walk 
in processions clad in a garment woven with 
gold, and shoes studded with jewels, his cloak 
fastened with a golden clasp, and wearing a 
crown of gold set with precious stones. At other 
times his dress differed little from that of a 
private person. 

In his eating and drinking he was temperate; 
more particularly so in his drinking, for he had 
the greatest abhorrence of drunkenness in any¬ 
body, but more especially in himself and his com¬ 
panions. He was unable to abstain from food 
for any length of time, and often complained that 
fasting was injurious to him. On the other hand, 
he very rarely feasted, only on great festive oc¬ 
casions, when there were very large gatherings. 
The daily service of his table consisted of only 
four dishes in addition to the roast meat, which 
the hunters used to bring in on spits, and of 
which he partook more freely than of any other 
food.—From Einhard’s Life of Charles . 


Charlemagne’s income from his farms. 

We desire that each steward shall make an an¬ 
nual statement of all our income, giving an ac¬ 
count of our lands cultivated by the oxen which 
our own plowmen drive and of our lands which 
the tenants of farms ought to plow; of the pigs, 
of the rents, of the obligations and fines; of the 
game taken in our forests without our permis¬ 
sion ; of the various compositions; of the mills, 
of the forest, of the fields, of the bridges and 
ships; of the free men and the districts under 
obligations to our treasury; of markets, vine¬ 
yards, and those who owe wine to us; of the 
hay, firewood, torches, planks, and other kinds 
of lumber; of the waste lands ; of the vegetables, 
millet, panic; of the wool, flax, and hemp; of 
the fruits of the trees; of the nut trees, larger 
and smaller; of the grafted trees of all kinds; 
of the gardens; of the turnips; of the fish 
ponds; of the hides, skins, and horns; of the 
honey and wax; of the fat, tallow, and soap; 
of the mulberry wine, cooked wine, mead, vine¬ 
gar, beer, and wine, new and old; of the new 
grain and the old ; of the hens and eggs ; of the 
geese; of the number of fishermen, workers in 
metal, sword makers, and shoemakers; of the 
bins and boxes; of the turners and saddlers; of 
the forges and mines,—that is, of iron, lead, or 
other substances; of the colts and fillies. They 
shall make all these known to us, set forth 
separately and in order, at Christmas, so that 
we may know what and how much of each thing 
we have. 

The greatest care must be taken that whatever 
is prepared or made with the hands,—that is, 
bacon, smoked meat, sausage, partially salted 
meat, wine, vinegar, mulberry wine, cooked wine, 
garum, mustard, cheese, butter, malt, beer, mead, 
honey, wax, flour,—all should be prepared and 
made with the greatest cleanliness. 

Each steward on each of our domains shall 
always have, for the sake of ornament, peacocks, 
pheasants, ducks, pigeons, partridges, and turtle¬ 
doves. 

In each of our estates the chambers shall be 
provided with counterpanes, cushions, pillows, 
bedclothes, coverings for the tables and benches; 
vessels of brass, lead, iron, and wood; andirons, 
chains, pothooks, adzes, axes, augers, cutlasses, 
and all other kinds of tools, so that it shall never 
be necessary to go elsewhere for them, or to bor¬ 
row them. And the weapons which are carried 
against the enemy shall be well cared for, so as 
to keep them in good condition; and when they 
are brought back they shall be placed in the 
chamber. 

For our women’s work they are to give at the 
proper time, as has been ordered, the materials,— 
that is, the linen, wool, woad, vermilion, mad¬ 
der, wool combs, teasels, soap, grease, vessels, 
and the other objects which are necessary. 

Of the kind of food not forbidden on fast 
days, two-thirds shall be sent each year for our 
own use,—that is, of the vegetables, fish, cheese, 
butter, honey, mustard, vinegar, millet, panic, 
dried and green herbs, radishes, and, in addi- 


CHARLES I—CHARLES V 


tion, of the wax, soap, and other small products; 
and let it be reported to us, by a statement, how 
much is left, as we have said above; and this 
statement must not be omitted as in the past, 
because after those two-thirds we wish to know 
how much remains. 

Each steward shall have in his district good 
workmen, namely, blacksmiths, a goldsmith, a 
silversmith, shoemakers, turners, carpenters, 
sword makers, fishermen, foilers, soap makers, 
men who know how to make beer, cider, perry, 
or other kind of liquor good to drink, bakers to 
make pastry for our table, net makers who know 
how to make nets for hunting, fishing, and fowl¬ 
ing, other sorts of workmen too numerous to be 
designated.—Extract from the Capitulary de 
Villis, issued in the year 800 or earlier. 

Charles I, Charles Francis Joseph 
(1887), Emperor of Austria and King of 
Hungary, succeeded to the throne on No¬ 
vember 22, 1916, on the death of his grand 
uncle, Francis Joseph, who had ruled sixty- 
eight years. Charles was the first of the 
imperial house of Hapsburg to obtain his 
education in the public schools. As a result 
of this he became very popular with all 
classes of people. His training was largely 
military and he became an efficient officer. 
His home life, prior to the assassination of 
Archduke Francis Ferdinand, in 1914, was 
very simple, but after that time he took 
over the estate of Este with its enormous 
revenue, which quite changed his mode of 
life. Charles took an active part in the 
prosecution of the war and on his acces¬ 
sion to the throne proclaimed his purpose 
to push the war to an unquestioned suc¬ 
cessful termination. 

Charles I (1600-1649), king of Eng¬ 
land. He was the son of James I, and 
the second Stuart sovereign. Politically 
and religiously he resembled his father, be¬ 
ing an upholder of the “divine right” the¬ 
ory and strongly opposed to Puritanism. 
His determination to levy taxes without the 
consent of Parliament, led to the passing of 
the Petition of Rights in 1628. Later, 
after ten years of personal rule, he was 
obliged, because of religious troubles with 
Scotland, to summon another Parliament in 
1640, which is known as the Long Parlia¬ 
ment. As a result of the struggle between 
this Parliament and the king, civil war 
broke out which ended only with the execu¬ 
tion of Charles in 1649. It is worthy of 


note that with the exception of Plymouth, 
all of the New England colonies were 
started during this period of religious and 
political persecution, thousands of English 
Puritans having migrated to Massachusetts 
Bay and the neighboring colonies from 
1630-1640. 

Charles II (1630-1685), king of Eng¬ 
land, son of Charles I. He came to the 
throne at the close of the Commonwealth 
in 1660, when the people, weary of the 
stern Puritan government of Cromwell, 
were ready for a change. Dickens in his 
Child's History of England, gives an in¬ 
teresting account of the doings of this 
“Merry Monarch.” Of him, one of his 
courtiers wrote: 

“Here lies our sovereign lord, the king, 

Whose word no man relies on; 

Who never says a foolish thing, 

And never does a wise one.” 

His reign is a period of duplicity, and at¬ 
tempts to evade parliamentary rights. The 
notorious cabal dates from this time. In 
spite of, or perhaps because of, the king, 
some advance was made toward popular 
liberty, notably in the passage of the Ha¬ 
beas Corpus Act. 

See Cabal; Habeas Corpus. 

Charles V (1500-1558), emperor of 
Germany and one of the great figures in the 
pages of history. From Ferdinand and Isa¬ 
bella, his grandparents on his mother’s side, 
he inherited Spain and the New World dis¬ 
covered by Columbus. From his father he 
inherited the rich provinces of the Nether¬ 
lands. From his father’s father, Maximilian, 
he inherited Austria. By election in compe¬ 
tition with Henry VIII of England and 
Francis I of France he was made emperor, 
the he-ad of the Holy Roman Empire. The 
idea of a universal empire—the restoration 
of the empire of Charlemagne—was now 
revived, but the Reformation broke out. 
With north Germany pulling one way un¬ 
der the influence of Luther, and England 
led in another direction by the authority 
of Henry VIII, the energies of one of the 
greatest men of the age were frittered 
away in keeping what he had, in retarding 
progress, in trying to reconcile irreconcil¬ 
able Protestant and Catholic elements. A 
reign which gave promise of a single state 


CHARLES XII—CHARLES’ LAW 


and a single church in all Christendom was 
signalized by the worst splitting up into 
acutely hostile camps the world has ever 
witnessed. After a stormy, disappointing 
life Charles abdicated. He laid down his 
crowns in 1556, and went into retirement 
for the few remaining years of his life. 

Charles XII (1682-1718), king of 
Sweden. He came to the throne when fifteen, 
and showed so wholesome and boyish an 
interest in books, games, and hunting that 
his neighbors thought to rob him of a part 
of his inheritance. The Poles, the Danes, 
and the Russians combined to cut off prov¬ 
inces for their own benefit. The Danes 
were the first to find that they had mis¬ 
taken the temper of the young lad. He 
adopted a plain manner of living—forbade 
wine on his table, dressed comfortably in 
a fur coat and large boots, and enjoyed 
sleeping on the ground wrapped in a sol¬ 
dier’s cloak. When he had a breathing 
spell he turned his attention to the Rus¬ 
sians, defeating an army of 80,000 men 
that were laying siege to one of his cities. 
The Poles and Saxons came next. For a 
time Sweden was the foremost military 
power in Europe and military men called 
him the madman of Europe. Very possibly 
success may have turned his head. In 
1707 he led an army of 43,000 Swedes 
against Moscow, and after a campaign of 
two years, conducted in a hostile country 
altogether too far from home and supplies, 
he was defeated disastrously. He fled to 
Turkey for protection. He stirred up the 
Turks to make war on Russia, and brought 
Peter the Great to the verge of destruction. 
By a sudden change of Turkish sentiment 
his efforts came to naught, and he escaped 
from the Turks in disguise. Returning to 
Sweden he busied himself getting the af¬ 
fairs of his country out of the confusion 
into which they had fallen. In 1718 he was 
killed by a cannon ball while besieging the 
city of Frederikshald. Plis characteristics 
are not inaptly set forth by the circum¬ 
stances of his death. It is said he fell with 
his hand on his sword, and with a picture 
of his great ancestor, Gustavus Adolphus, 
and a prayerbook in his pocket. Charles 
was scholarly, ambitious, and brave. He 
did not have the resources behind him with 


which to maintain his conquests. Dr. Sam¬ 
uel Johnson mentions his as a striking ex¬ 
ample in his Vanity of Human Wishes. 

He left the name at which the world grew pale, 
To point a moral, to adorn a tale. 

Charles the Bold (1433-1477), was a 
duke of Burgundy, on the borderline be¬ 
tween France and Germany. A good view 
of his court and an estimate of his char¬ 
acter may be had in Scott’s Quentin 
Durward. He was an ambitious man. 
His country had no natural boundary—no 
natural independence. He tried to extend 
his dukedom into a kingdom. He acquired 
territory for a time, but he was defeated 
signally by the Swiss in the battles of 
Granson and Morat. In 1477 he was slain 
in battle. In Scott’s Anne of Geierstein 
we have a vivid picture of rending lances 
and the rout of Charles’ army. 

Charles Edward Stuart (1720-1788), 
the “Young Pretender.” He was the 
grandson of James II, the last male Stuart 
on the throne of England. Though living 
abroad he assumed the title of king, and 
was called the Pretender. In 1745 he 
landed in Scotland with a little French 
money and 1,500 muskets. The High¬ 
landers, encouraged by the Jacobites, 
chiefly Catholic, everywhere flocked to his 
standard. He advanced to within 100 
miles of London, winning the battles of 
Prestonpans and Falkirk, but he was de¬ 
feated finally in the famous battle of Cul- 
loden. He escaped with difficulty to the 
Highlands. A reward of $150,000 was 
offered for his betrayal but the High¬ 
landers were loyal. Through the manage¬ 
ment of the dauntless Flora McDonald, 
he lay in hiding until a ship bore him away 
to France. France and Spain settled a 
pension on him. His rights to the throne, 
so far as the rule of succession went, were 
unquestioned, but his moral and his polit¬ 
ical and religious views were not accept¬ 
able to the nation. 

Charles’ Law, The effect of heat on a 
mass of gas is to increase its volume. If 
enclosed so that it cannot expand the pres¬ 
sure which it exerts is increased. The law 
governing these relations is called Charles’ 
Law, or sometimes Guy Lussac’s Law. It 
has been found by experiment that either 


CHARLES MARTEL—CHARLESTON, S. C. 


pressure or volume remaining constant, the 
other increases at a rate of 1/273 of that 
at 0°C, for each degree rise of temperature. 
Reducing the temperature then to 273°C, 
would, if the law held true to that limit, 
reduce the pressure and volume to zero, 
which latter is manifestly impossible. 
What would happen, probably, if this low 
temperature, known as the absolute zero, 
could be reached, is that the molecules of 
which the gas is composed, would cease 
their motion due to actual contact, when 
the state would no longer be that of a gas. 
Another way of stating this law is that un¬ 
der the same pressure the volume of a gas 
varies as its absolute temperature. 

Charles Martel (689-741), Mayor of 
the Palace under the Merovingians. Dur¬ 
ing the seventh and eighth centuries, while 
the power was rapidly slipping from the 
hands of the slothful Merovingian rulers of 
the Franks, a new family distinguished 
through five generations was rising into 
prominence. These held the office of May¬ 
or of the Palace, and were the real rulers 
of the Frankish kingdom. The greatest of 
this family before Charlemagne was his 
grandfather, Charles Martel. Most of his 
administration was spent in war, first in 
subduing the rebellious parts of the Frank¬ 
ish kingdom itself, then in war against their 
neighbors. His greatest achievement, how¬ 
ever, was the defeat of the Mohammedans 
at the Battle of Tours in 732. Repulsed 
and crushed by the forces of Charles, the 
Saracens retreated across the Pyrenees into 
Spain. Western Europe was thus saved 
from the Mohammedanism that engulfed 
the eastern world, and its savior was im¬ 
mortalized by the epithet Martel, meaning 
the hammer, added to his name. 

Charleston, South Carolina, the me¬ 
tropolis of the state. It is situated on a 
peninsula at the head of a landlocked har¬ 
bor, six miles long and half as wide—one 
of the finest in the Union. The Ashley and 
the Cooper rivers sweep by, one on either 
hand, giving a water front on three sides. 
By building jetties so that the tides race 
out and in through a narrow channel, a bar 
across the ocean entrance has been scoured 
away to a depth of thirty feet. The water 
at the city is forty feet deep. The harbor 


is defended by Fort Moultrie at the en¬ 
trance, and by Fort Sumter on an island 
in the middle of the bay. The former was 
the scene of Sergeant Jasper’s gallant ex¬ 
ploit; the latter was the fortification 
against which the first gun of the Civil War 
was fired. 

A settlement was begun in 1670. Fif¬ 
teen years later a colony of Huguenots 
built a church. The old Huguenot fami¬ 
lies of Charleston correspond to the Dutch 
families of colonial New York. When the 
Revolutionary War came, Charleston was 
the third seaport in the colonies. It was 
outspoken for the American cause. A Brit¬ 
ish fleet was beaten off in 1776 by Fort 
Moultrie, then a palmetto log fort. In 
1780 the city was taken by Sir Henry 
Clinton, who made it his base of opera¬ 
tions in the south. Charleston was the 
first American port to send cotton to Eu¬ 
rope. The earliest shipment was sent in 
1784. In 1865 the public buildings and 
shipping were burned to prevent their fall¬ 
ing into the hands of General Sherman. In 
1886 one of the heaviest earthquake shocks 
ever known in the United States reduced 
the city to a wreck, killing half a hundred 
people, and damaging buildings to the ex¬ 
tent of over $8,000,000. 

Notwithstanding its checkered history the 
city is growing rapidly. The 1900 census 
gave a population of 55,807, of which 31,- 
622 were negroes. Its commerce is fast in¬ 
creasing and bids fair to exceed the figures 
before the Civil War, when $17,000,000 
worth of cotton alone was exported annual¬ 
ly. Among the present exports are rice, cot¬ 
ton, turpentine, lumber, fertilizers, fruits, 
and vegetables. The city has a monopoly 
of the long, staple, Sea Island cotton, the 
finest in the world. The population by the 
census of 1910 is 58,833. 

The leading manufacture of the city is 
that of fertilizers from the inexhaustible 
deposits of phosphate found in the vicinity. 
Rice is milled; leaf tobacco made into ci¬ 
gars and plugs; cotton is baled; oil is 
pressed from cotton seed; bags are woven; 
and baskets and crates for fruit are manu¬ 
factured in enormous numbers. The city 
is built of brick. Mansions are set back from 
the street in beautiful gardens. The finest 









CHARLESTON, W. VA.—CHARTERHOUSE 


public buildings are the postoffice and cus¬ 
tom house, the most interesting is an im¬ 
posing old city hall with a fine historical 
museum. St. Michael’s church was built in 
1761. It has a fine chime of bells. Many 
places of interest are to be found in the 
vicinity. The Isle of Palms is one of the 
handsomest seaside resorts in the world. 

The United States has been liberal in its 
dealings with Charleston. In addition to 
jetties, a postoffice costing $500,000 and 
a custom house costing $3,000,000, not less 
than $10,000,000 is being expended on a 
naval station seven miles up the Cooper. 

See South Carolina. 

Charleston, the capital city of West 
Virginia and county seat of Kanawha 
County. It is the center of trade for large 
coal and lumber interests, its situation at 
the confluence of the Elk and Kanawha 
Rivers affording ample shipping facilities. 
The city has many fine public buildings 
and handsome residences. Its industries 
include iron foundries, steel plants, boiler 
works, marble works, woolen mills, dye 
works, machine shops and ship yards. 
There are manufactories of furniture, glass, 
wagons, and axes. The city is supplied 
with natural gas. Its population in 1910 
was 22,996. 

Charles’s Wain, an English name for 
the constellation of the Great Bear—the 
Big Dipper. The term is understood to 
be a corruption of Carl’s wain, or the peas¬ 
ant’s wagon. 

And we danced about the may-pole and in the 
hazel copse, 

Till Charles’s Wain came out above the tall 
white chimney-tops.—Tennyson, May Queen. 

Charlotte, a growing city of North 
Carolina and county seat of Mecklenburg 
County. It is situated on Sugar Creek, 
one hundred twenty-five miles southwest 
of Raleigh. It is in a coal mining region, 
and gold mines have been opened in the 
vicinity. There are manufactures of cot¬ 
ton, iron, clothing, farming implements, 
and mill supplies. It is the seat of Biddle 
University. The climate is considered de¬ 
sirable for invalids. The population of 
Charlotte in 1910 was 34,014. 

Charon, ka'ron, in classical mythology, 
the ferryman whose duty it was to trans¬ 


port the souls of the dead over the rivers 
of the lower world. Charon was the son 
of Erebus and Nox. He is described as 
an old man, gloomy and sad of countenance, 
with a matted beard and squalid clothing. 

Lucian, a Greek writer of the second 
century, in his Dialogues of the Dead, rep¬ 
resents the souls of the dead as offering 
Charon excuses for delaying their passage 
across the stream from which there is no 
return. In Ben Jonson’s tragedy, Cati¬ 
line, so many souls are represented as seek¬ 
ing passage at one time in Charon’s boat 
that 

The rugged Charon fainted, 

* And asked a navy rather than a boat, 

To ferry over the sad world that came. 

Charon is represented by some writers as 
bearing the souls first over the Acheron, 
then over the Cocytus, and lastly over the 
Styx. In the sixth book of the Aeneid, 
Aeneas descends to the lower world with 
his guide, and finds Charon on the shores 
of the river Acheron, where it empties into 
the Cocytus. Virgil does not keep the riv¬ 
ers distinct, however, for Aeneas is taken 
across the “Stygian flood” in Charon’s boat. 
Charon’s fee was a small coin—an obolus 
or a danace which, at the time of burial, 
was placed in the mouth of the deceased. 

There Charon stands, who rules the dreary 
coasts; 

A sordid god ; down from his hoary chin 
A length of beard descends, uncomb’d, unclean; 
His eyes like hollow furnaces on fire; 

A girdle foul with grease binds his obscene 
attire. 

He spreads his canvas, with his pole he steers; 
The freights of flitting ghosts in his thin bot¬ 
tom bears. 

He look’d in years, yet in his years were seen 
A youthful vigor, an autumnal green.—Virgil. 

Charon’s Staircase, in the Greek thea¬ 
ter, steps which led from the middle of the 
stage to the orchestra or dancing place, 
which corresponds to the pit in modern 
theaters. In plays in which a ghost ap¬ 
peared, it reached the stage by way of 
these steps, whence the name, Charon’s 
staircase. See Charon; Theater. 

Charterhouse, a hospital and school 
formerly of London but now located at 
Godaiming, Surrey County, England. In 
1371 there was established in London a 
Carthusian monastery. In 1611, Sir 


\ 


CHARTER OAK—CHARYBDIS 


Thomas Sutton converted the monastery 
into a sort of almshouse for “poor breth¬ 
ren” and school for the “sons of poor 
gentlemen,” endowing it with revenues 
from more than twenty estates. Charter- 
house provides a home for eighty “poor 
brethren” who must be bachelors, members 
of the Church of England and at least 
fifty years of age. The school offers forty- 
four scholarships to boys from twelve to 
fifteen years of age, but the school has 
acquired such a reputation that the sons of 
many Londoners who are not “poor gentle¬ 
men” are sent to it. Many noted English¬ 
men, among them John Wesley, George 
Grote, Addison, Thackeray, Steele, and 
Blackstone attended the Charterhouse 
School. 

Charter Oak, a fine old oak tree at 
Hartford, Connecticut. It was over six 
feet in diameter at the time of its destruc¬ 
tion by a storm, August 21, 1856. This 
oak is one of the historic trees of America. 
Connecticut was an independent colony 
governed by its own assembly, elected in 
accordance with a charter granted by the 
king of England in 1662. In 1686 Sir 
Edmund Andros was sent over to govern 
the New England colonies. In October 
of the following year he visited Hartford 
and called on the assembly to surrender its 
charter. The story runs that the debate 
was prolonged until late, when the lights 
were extinguished and a Captain Wads¬ 
worth took the charter from the table and 
hid it in a hollow in this oak tree, where it 
remained until a change of government in 
England enabled the colony to resume its 
previous form of government. See Hart¬ 
ford. 

Chartists, and Chartism, a radical re¬ 
form movement in England about 1830-48. 
The name is derived from a charter, or 
declaration of needed reforms. It was 
drawn up by a joint committee of six work¬ 
ingmen and six members of Parliament. 
The reformers insisted on what now seem 
matters of course to an American, but they 
were then deemed revolutionary, and, in¬ 
deed, they went further than most of the 
original American states had gone at the 
opening of this period. The leading de¬ 
mands were six: (1) a vote for each man ; 


(2) parliamentary representation accord¬ 
ing to population; (3) voting by ballot; 
(4) pay for members of Parliament so 
that poor men could afford to serve; (5) 
annual elections; (6) abolition of prop¬ 
erty qualifications for membership in Par¬ 
liament. The movement was attended by 
riots and immense meetings, but the ex¬ 
citement subsided with time. Twenty 
years later a second agitation resulted in 
a substantial granting of the demands, 
though, even yet, an unmarried son at 
home may not vote, neither does a member 
of Parliament receive compensation. The 
conditions of the Chartist period may be 
seen in Charles Kingsley’s Alton Locke 
and Yeast. 

Chartres, sharter, a city fifty miles 
southwest of Paris. It is an ancient town 
half surrounded by walls. It is the seat 
of the trade usual to a prosperous agri¬ 
cultural region. It is noted for its vast, 
magnificent Gothic cathedral, one of the 
finest in Europe. This church has two 
spires of different construction. The tall¬ 
est is 403 feet in height. It is considered 
the most perfectly proportioned spire in 
the world. There are 130 stained glass 
windows of exquisite workmanship, some 
of them dating from the thirteenth century. 
Henry IV was crowned in the choir of 
this cathedral, and St. Bernard preached 
the Second Crusade here. Quite in con¬ 
trast are the surrounding wood and plas¬ 
ter houses. They are set with the gable 
toward the streets which, in many places, 
are so narrow and so steep that carriages 
cannot pass. 

Charybdis, ka-rib'dis, in Greek my¬ 
thology, a terrible sea monster who, three 
times each day, sucked in the sea and dis¬ 
charged it again in a whirlpool. Charyb¬ 
dis was supposed to have been a daughter 
of Poseidon and Gaea, whom Zeus in an¬ 
ger had hurled into the sea. There she 
became a whirlpool and swallowed up 
ships that came too near. Charybdis was 
located in the Straits of Messina, on the 
Italian side. Navigators striving to es¬ 
cape the fate of being sucked into the 
whirlpool were likely to run into danger 
from Scylla, another monster on the oppo¬ 
site shore. The words Scylla and Charvb- 



CHASE—CHATEAUBRIAND 


dis came to be used proverbially to signi¬ 
fy opposite dangers that beset one’s path. 
The poet Horace says that an author striv¬ 
ing to avoid Scylla often drifts into 
Charybdis; that is, in trying to avoid one 
fault, he falls into some other. In Shakes¬ 
peare’s Merchant of Venice, Launcelot, the 
clown, says to Jessica, “Thus when I shun 
Scylla, your father, I fall into Charybdis, 
your mother.” See Scylla. 

Chase, Salmon P. (1808-1873), chief 
justice of the United States. He was born 
at Cornish, New Hampshire, January 13, 
1808, and died at New York, May 7, 1873. 
His father was a farmer. When a boy 
he lived with his uncle, Bishop Philander 
Chase, near Cincinnati, for the purpose of 
attending his school. Many anecdotes are 
told of the bookish boy. With a party 
of his classmates he started for a trip in 
the woods. The other boys agreed to make 
him carry the lunch basket. This he did 
uncomplainingly until he thought he had 
done his share. Then he offered it to one 
after another, but all declined; whereupon 
young Salmon set the basket down. The 
party w r ent on, thinking that Salmon would 
go back after it, but he was evidently the 
last one who intended to do so,- and they 
were obliged to send one of their own 
number for it. At another time his uncle 
told him to kill and dress a pig. He got 
his water too hot, with the result that the 
bristles set, and could not be pulled out. 
Nothing daunted, young Salmon obtained 
his cousin’s set of razors and shaved the 
pig admirably from head to tail. He was 
complimented by his uncle, the bishop, for 
the excellency of his workmanship, but a 
settlement came later when his cousin tried 
to use his razors. 

Later Chase graduated at Dartmouth 
and applied to an uncle Chase, then sena¬ 
tor, for a position in a Washington depart¬ 
ment. “My boy,” said the old senator, 
“I’ll give you a half a dollar to buy a 
spade, and you may dig your way into 
something of a place in life; but I will 
not get you a place in a government of¬ 
fice. I have ruined one or two young men 
in that way already, and I’m not going to 
ruin you. The man who enters the govern¬ 
ment service seldom does anything more. He 


is swallowed up in these departments and 
that is the last heard of him.” Young 
Chase thought his uncle hardhearted but 
he swallowed his disappointment, taught 
school for a short time, studied law under 
William Wirt, and opened office at Cin¬ 
cinnati. Plis first fee was fifty cents, 
which his client came in the next day and 
borrowed again. His first case of impor¬ 
tance was the defense of a negro. People 
said that a bright young man had ruined 
himself, but such did not prove to be the 
case. 

He became governor of Ohio, then a 
United States senator. He was a candi¬ 
date against Seward and Lincoln for the 
presidential nomination. Lincoln made 
him secretary of the treasury, and later 
chief justice of the supreme court. Chase 
was a very able, fearless man, of unques¬ 
tioned integrity and patriotism. He never 
could rid himself of the notion, however, 
that he ought to have been president in¬ 
stead of Lincoln. He not infrequently 
made himself very disagreeable. He was 
a man of regular habits and simple tastes, 
but maintained an elegant home. Under 
the management of his daughter, Kate, 
who married Senator Sprague of Rhode 
Island and was afterward divorced from 
him, the Chase home in Washington was for 
many years noted for hospitality and bril¬ 
liant receptions. 

Chassepot, shas-po', a breechloading 
rifle invented in 1863 by a Frenchman of 
that name. It was adopted by the French 
army in 1866, but was discarded at the 
close of the Franco-Prussian War. It is 
a light, accurate, long range rifle, weigh¬ 
ing but nine pounds, but heats and becomes 
clogged in action. The French battalions 
were able to open a destructive fire at 1,500 
yards,-but by the time the Germans had 
reached close range with their needleguns 
the chassepots were so hot as to be useless. 

Chateaubriand, sha-to-bre-on' (1768- 
1848), a brilliant French essayist. He 
lived through the scenes of the French 
Revolution, the reigns of Napoleon Bona¬ 
parte, and the later Bourbons. He held 
numerous positions of trust and honor, but 
is noted for his incisive writings. His 
most noted work is the Genius of Christi- 


CHATHAM—CHATTERTON 


anity, written in favor of Catholicism. A 
pamphlet on Napoleon and the Bourbons 
was declared by Louis XVIII to have 
been worth 100,000 men to him in regain¬ 
ing the throne of his fathers. A touch 
of interest is added when we know that he 
traveled in North America and wrote an 
epic poem on The Natchez, commemorat¬ 
ing the fate of the red man. Some critic has 
called him a link between .Goethe and By¬ 
ron. 

Aristocracy has three ages: first, the age of 
force, from which it degenerates into the age of 
privilege, and is extinguished, finally, in the age 
of vanity.—Chateaubriand. 

Chatham. See Pitt, William. 

Chattanooga, the seat of Hamilton 
County, Tennessee. It is pleasantly situ¬ 
ated on the south bank of the Tennessee 
River. The presence of coal and iron, to¬ 
gether with transportation facilities both 
by river and by rail, make the city a nat¬ 
ural center of iron manufacture. Boilers, 
steel roofing, gas burners, wagons, furni¬ 
ture, hosiery, and patent medicines are spe¬ 
cialities. The city had a population in 
1910 of about 44,604. Suburbs add a 
full half to this estimate. The city lies 
at the foot of the Cumberlands. Lookout 
Mountain, Missionary Ridge, and Orchard 
Knob are in the outskirts. The vicinity is 
memorable in the history of the Civil War 
for a series of engagements known as the 
battle of Chattanooga, fought November 
23, 24, and 25, 1863. The Federal troops 
60,000 strong, led by Grant, Thomas, 
Hooker, and Sherman, defeated 40,000 
Confederates under General Bragg. The 
total killed, wounded, and missing for both 
sides was 12,531. The battlefield of Chick- 
amauga, now a national military park, 
lies within the Georgia border, six miles 
to the eastward. The entire vicinity is 
scenic and historic. Large, comfortable 
hotels and mild winter weather render the 
city a favorite resort. 

Chatterton, chat'er-ton, Thomas 
(1752-1770), an English poet. It is not 
so much for his poetry that Chatterton’s 
name is remembered, as for a peculiar 
literary deception which he practiced upon 
his contemporaries. It is not an uncom¬ 
mon thing for a person to claim the author¬ 


ship of that which has been produced by 
others. This boy—he was not yet eight¬ 
een when he died—produced poems, many 
of them of merit, and pretended that they 
were the work of writers of a bygone age. 
When his story is known he is not apt to 
be blamed greatly. 

Chatterton was born at Bristol. His fa¬ 
ther, a schoolmaster who had been some¬ 
thing of an antiquary, something of a mu¬ 
sician, and something of a poet, died before 
the boy’s birth. The mother worked hard 
to care for her two children. Thomas was 
so unlike other children that he was re¬ 
garded as lacking in intelligence. He 
attended a charity school for a short time, 
and before he was ten years old had de¬ 
veloped into a dreamy, imaginative, some¬ 
times melancholy, bookworm, who, if let 
alone, spent his entire time in reading. 
When he was about eleven years old he 
was stirred up by the removal of a beau¬ 
tiful but very ancient cross from the 
churchyard of St. Mary Radcliff. The 
indignant boy wrote and published in a lo¬ 
cal journal a very clever satire on the par¬ 
ish vandal, alluding to the churchwarden 
who had caused the removal of the orna¬ 
ment. Other contributions followed. 

In the muniment of this same church, 
whose sexton was Chatterton’s uncle, were 
several old oaken chests filled with parch¬ 
ment deeds and records. With these the 
boy had amused himself from babyhood. 
The beautiful old church was his favorite 
haunt, and it was doubtless here that he 
conceived the beginnings of an ingenious 
romance which came to be a large part of 
his life. This romance was of an imagi¬ 
nary monk, supposed to have lived in the 
fifteenth century. His name was Thomas 
Rowley, and his life and various experi¬ 
ences were worked out with wonderful 
skill by the precocious boy. The many 
beautiful poems, which Chatterton claimed 
that Rowley had written and he had dis¬ 
covered in the old chests, were probably 
produced from 1764 to 1768. Many of 
the boy’s credulous contemporaries accepted 
them without question, and they occasioned 
discussion for a full century. Soon the 
boy went to London. Here, while some 
of his work was accepted, he was poorly 


CHAUCER 


paid. He became discouraged and, before 
he was quite eighteen years of age, took 
his own life. He was buried by strangers 
in a pauper’s grave. Later his remains 
were removed to the old churchyard of 
St. Mary Radcliff. A monument was 
erected to his memory, inscribed with lines 
from his own pen: “To the memory of 
Thomas Chatterton.—Reader, judge not! 
If thou art a Christian, believe that he 
shall be judged by a Superior Power. To 
that Power only is he now answerable.” 

Chaucer, Geoffrey, chaw'ser, jef'fre 
(1340-1400), an English poet. He was 
the son of a London wine merchant. He 
was brought up at court as a ladies’ page. 
In 1359 he went to France in the army of 
Edward III, was taken prisoner and ran¬ 
somed. A little later he went abroad sev¬ 
eral times as an ambassador. In this way 
he became familiar with Italian literature, 
this being before the day of printing. He 
was at one time collector of customs. In 
1386 he was dismissed by the court to a 
life of poverty, yet in the end received a 
pension, and at his death he was the first 
to be buried in that part of Westminster 
Abbey .now known as the Poets’ Corner. 
There were several English dialects. Chau¬ 
cer made his dialect so prominent that it 
became the literary language of England. 

At a time when printed books were un¬ 
known and diverting manuscripts few, 
Chaucer wrote to amuse the queen and the 
court. A parliament of the birds, a story 
of the Trojan war, a story of a glass tem¬ 
ple on which famous names are carved, 
but which continually melt away, and sto¬ 
ries of famous women, such as Dido and 
Cleopatra, are some of the subjects. His 
fame rests on the Canterbury Tales, the 
best stories in verse in the English lang¬ 
uage. Chaucer is called the father of Eng¬ 
lish poetry. He was not the first to write 
verse, but his predecessors wrote in Anglo- 
Saxon, almost as difficult to read as French. 
Chaucer is the first great English poet. 

The Tales were not the invention of a 
day. It was the fashion of the time to 
make a pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas 
a Becket at Canterbury, “the holy blissful 
martyr for to seek.” A company of people 
representative of the different classes of 


society happens together at the Tabard 
Inn in Southwark. This inn is still to be 
seen in southwest London at the beginning 
of the Canterbury road. 

The poet introduces the characters in a 
prologue. Some of the more prominent 
of them are a clerk, or scholar, who would 
rather have twenty books of Aristotle in 
“blak or reed” than rich robes, “And glad¬ 
ly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche”; 
a “veray parfit gentil knight,” and his son, 
a yonge squire, who was 

A lovyere and a lusty bachelor; 

a prioress, 

That of her smyling was ful symple and coy; 

a ruddy, baldheaded monk, fond of hunt¬ 
ing, 

A fat swan loved he best of any roast; 
a wanton merry friar, 

He was an esy man to give penance; 

a merchant with a forked beard and Flan¬ 
ders’ beaver hat; a wise sergeant of the 
law, 

• Nowher so besy a man as he ther n’as, 

And yet he semed besier than he was; 

a franklin, 

Whit was his berd as is a dayesye; 
he cared not who was his cook, if the sauce 
were right; a doctor, who spoke of “phisik 
and surgerye” and who loved gold; a good 
wife with red stockings and new shoes, a 
bold face and a shrewd tongue, and yet 
she was a worthy woman all her lyve: 

Housbondes at chirce dore she hadde fyve; 

a poor parson rich in holy thought and 
work, who visited the sick and set an ex¬ 
ample of a right life, preaching the gos¬ 
pel, 

That firste he wroghte and afterward he taughte. 

Other characters are a plowman; and a 
miller 

Well koude he stelen corn and tollen thries, 

a reve; a pardoner; a haberdasher; a car¬ 
penter ; a weaver; a dyer; a cook; a ship- 
man; and, lastly, their host of the Tabard 
Inn. 

All these characters, twenty-nine in all, 
Chaucer sets on horseback under the guid¬ 
ance of the Tabard host. Under the influ- 


CHAUTAUQUA—CHECKERS 


t 


ence of a common purpose, restraint is for 
the once relaxed, social distinctions are 
laid aside. They set off a merry company. 
As they jog along each is to tell a tale. 
It is difficult to describe the tales without 
repeating them. So far as Chaucer found 
time to compose them, he puts into the 
mouth of each such a tale as might be ex¬ 
pected of one in that particular walk of 
life. In this way the tales give a picture 
of the manners, jokes, and ways of think¬ 
ing of the different kinds of people then 
living. The full number of tales was nev¬ 
er completed. 

The study of Chaucer is not at all diffi¬ 
cult if undertaken with an edition provided 
with a vocabulary. The old spellings, plu¬ 
rals, possessives, and verb forms are in¬ 
structive. Swete and smale, each pro¬ 
nounced in two syllables, are the old forms 
of sweet and small; ton, eyen, and slioon 
are old plurals of toe, eye, and shoe, formed 
by adding “n” to the singular. Slepen 
and l on gen are the equivalents of the verbs, 
sleep and long. The prologue is one of 
the most artless, cutting, musical bits of 
writing in the English language. Some 
of the tales are certainly a trifle coarse. 
Chaucer ingeniously pleads that he is not 
at fault, that he must tell the tales as they 
were told. Chaucer was called by his con¬ 
temporaries the Flower of Poets. 

The star of a misty morning.—Welsh. 

The firste fynder of our fair language.—Occleve. 
Our greatest poet of the Middle Ages.—Hallam. 

Dan Chaucer, well of English undefyled 
On Fame’s eternall beadroll worthie to be fyled. 

—Edmund Spenser. 

Chautauqua, sha-taw'qua, the Indian 
name of a beautiful lake in extreme west¬ 
ern New York. The name has also passed 
to the county in which the lake is situated 
and to a summer resort on its shores. The 
Chautauqua Assembly, instituted by Dr. 
John Vincent in 1874 to give vacation 
instruction to Sunday school teachers has 
grown to large proportions as a summer 
center for teachers and reform rallies. The 
Chautauqua Reading Circle grew out of 
the Assembly. A simple plan of organi¬ 
zation has been followed. General officers 
arrange four-year courses in study and 
reading, usually preparing special texts for 


the purpose. Local circles of adults are or¬ 
ganized by correspondence. They elect 
their own officers and meet regularly for 
study and conference. Diplomas are is¬ 
sued by the general officers upon sufficient 
evidence that the entire course has been 
pursued with intelligence. A quarter of 
a million members have been claimed for 
the Circle. 

Check. See Clearing House. 

Checkerberry. See Wintergreen. 

Checkers or Draughts, a game of skill. 
It is played by two persons with twelve 
disks or men each, on a checkered board of 
sixty-four squares. The squares are col¬ 
ored in two alternating colors, it matters 
not what, so that the squares stand in clear 



Checkerboard. 

contrast. The game is played on the 
squares of a single color. In the beginning 
the board is placed so that each player 
shall have a double corner as 1-5 or 28-32 
at his right hand. Each player arranges 
his twelve men in three rows, so as to oc¬ 
cupy the squares numbered 1-12 and 21-32 
respectively. The men of one player are 
called the white; those of the other player, 
the black. A man may move in either 
diagonal direction forward, or toward the 
enemy. Thus white, on 23, may move to 
18 or to 19. Black, on 12, may move to 
16. When a white man reaches 1, 2, 3, 
or 4 he has reached the king row and be¬ 
comes a king. He should be crowned or 










CHEERYBLE BROTHERS—CHEESE 


doubled by a second disk. He may now 
move backward. A king at 15 may move 
to any one of the four squares at its cor¬ 
ners; that is to say, 10, 11, 18, or 19. In 
like manner, a black man reaching 29, 30, 
31, or 32 becomes a king. A king is more 
valuable than a man. Whenever a man 
finds an adversary on the next diagonal 
square with a vacant square beyond, he 
may jump over and take that man, thus 
removing him from the board. If a white 
man lay at 19, and a black man at 15, and 
it were white’s turn to move, white might 
take black by jumping to the vacant 10. 
The object of the game is to remove the 
men of one’s adversary from the board, or 
to block them so that they cannot move. 
When the number of men on each side has 
been so reduced that there is no hope of 
either player winning, the game is said to 
be drawn. Any number of onlookers may be 
present, but it is considered a want of eti¬ 
quette to assist either player. 

The origin of the game is buried in an¬ 
tiquity. It is an ancient game with the 
Chinese, and was well known to the Egyp¬ 
tians, Greeks, and Romans. A curious bit 
of sculpture on the wall of a chamber in 
ancient Thebes represents Rameses III 
playing a game of checkers with a goddess. 
The earliest description of the game in 
English is dated 1566. 

See Chess; Hoyle; Games. 

Cheeryble Brothers, The (Charles 
and Edwin), a firm of London merchants 
in Dickens’ Nicholas Nickleby. They are 
twin brothers, warmhearted, simpleminded, 
cheerful old gentlemen, friends of the 
Nicklebys. It is said that Dickens found 
the originals of these characters in the 
Grant brothers, cotton-spinners of Man¬ 
chester. Dickens follows a not uncommon 
fashion of his own in selecting a name for 
these brothers, which, by its sound, con¬ 
veys some impression of the owner’s per¬ 
sonality. Dickens’ prefaces to various vol¬ 
umes of his works are often interesting. 
The following quotation in regard to the 
Cheeryble Brothers is from the preface to 
the first edition of Nicholas Nickleby: 

Those who take an interest in this tale will 
be glad to learn that the Brothers Cheeryble 
live; that their liberal charity, their singleness 

A 


of heart, their noble nature, and their unbounded 
benevolence, are no creations of the author’s 
brain; but are prompting every day (and often- 
est by stealth) some munificent and generous 
deed in that town of which they are the pride 
and honor. 

In the preface to a later edition of the 
same work, the above paragraph is quoted, 
with the following addition: 

If I were to attempt to sum up the hundreds 
upon hundreds of letters, from all sorts of 
people in all sorts of latitudes and climates, to 
which this unlucky paragraph has since given 
rise, I should get into an arithmetical difficulty 
from which I could not easily extricate myself. 
Suffice it to say, that I believe the applications 
for loans, gifts, and offices of profit which I 
have been requested to forward to the originals 
of the Brothers Cheeryble (with whom I never 
interchanged any communication in my life), 
would have exhausted the combined patronage 
of all the Lord Chancellors since the accession 
of the House of Brunswick, and would have 
broken the rest of the Bank of England. 

See Nicholas Nickleby. 

Cheese, a dairy product prepared from 
curd or coagulated milk. Cheese is less 
concentrated than butter. It can be kept 
wholesome for a greater length of time 
and it saves a larger percentage of the 
strength of the milk. Homemade cheese is 
still an important article of produce. When 
milk is brought to the right temperature, 
about 84°, liquid rennet is added in suffi¬ 
cient quantities to produce coagulation. 
Under proper conditions milk separates in 
from twenty to thirty minutes, into a white 
curd and a watery whey. The latter is 
drained off, and, though it contains less 
food than buttermilk, it is richer than wa¬ 
ter, and is sent to the swill barrel. The 
curd is then removed to a chopping bowl 
and cut into fine pieces, to permit the es¬ 
cape of whey that may be inclosed in air 
spaces. This operation is performed with 
a sharp knife of two or more parallel 
blades like that used in chopping hash. 
The fine curd is then salted to taste, placed 
in a cloth, and deposited in a cheesehoop 
or strong wooden cylinder surrounded with 
iron hoops, having much the appearance 
of a half-bushel measure, but without top 
or bottom. The hoop with its contents is 
placed on a flat surface in a cheese press. 
A circular board, fitting like a piston, is 
placed in the upper end of the hoop, and 


CHEESE CLOTH—CHELSEA 


pressure is applied for a day or two until 
what little whey remains has been forced 
out, and the curd has been pressed into a 
firm cheese. The cheese is then removed 
from the hoop and covered with three 
pieces of cotton cloth, one piece running 
like a band around the circumference, with 
a circular piece for each end and all neatly 
sewed together. It is then anointed with 
butter and placed on a shelf to cure. Cur¬ 
ing cheeses are turned every few days and 
reanointed. The cloth and ointment are 
designed not only to keep the cheese in 
shape and to protect it from becoming 
soiled, but to exclude the eggs of flies and 
other insects. A sort of bacterial fermen¬ 
tation takes place in the cheese, when it 
is said to be ripe and ready for market. 
Some prefer a cheese three months old; 
others want it to ripen for two or three 
years. 

About the middle of the last century, 
cheese factories sprang up in America. It 
has been found not only that they save 
housewives labor, but that factory cheese 
can be produced more economically and 
with greater uniformity of quality. Ac¬ 
cording to the latest statistics nearly 
nineteen-twentieths of the cheese made in 
the United States and Canada is produced 
by factories. A number of interesting 
items may be stated. About 4,000 cheese 
factories receive milk from about 1,200,- 
000 cows, and produce 281,972,324 pounds 
of cheese annually. New York has 1,314 
cheese factories; Wisconsin, 1,286; Ohio, 
320; Pennsylvania, 140; Michigan, 136; 
Illinois, 123; Iowa, 89; Vermont, 71; and 
Minnesota, 53. About 17,000,000 pounds 
of homemade cheese are produced, bring¬ 
ing up the total annual product to very 
nearly 300,000,000 pounds. It is worth 
at wholesale, that is to say, to the pro¬ 
ducer, from 11 to 17 cents per pound. In 
addition to domestic cheese, America im¬ 
ports about 32,000,000 pounds including 
6,000,000 pounds of the celebrated Swiss 
cheese. We export 10,000,000 pounds. 
Roquefort cheese is made from the milk 
of sheep. Limburger cheese from Germany 
and Brie cheese from France are charac¬ 
terized by a strong odor. The milk of 
goats makes a very rich cheese. 


It is not possible to say how much cheese 
is made in the world. The chief cheese 


exporting countries and the number of 
pounds exported in a recent year were: 


Country. 

Bulgaria . 

Canada .. 

France . 

Germany . 

I taly . 

Netherlands 
New Zealand . 

Russia . 

Switzerland ... 
United States . 
Other countries 


Pounds. 

5,674,170 

189,381,875 

30,511,968 

2,891,803 

46,607,032 

113,648,000 

26,525,296 

1,300,061 

62,213,331 

10,341,335 

8,114,222 


Total . 497,209,093 

The cheese buying countries with the 
number of pounds bought by each in the 
same year were: 


Country. Pounds. 

Argentina . 7,265,746 

Australia . 299,711 

Austria-Hungary . 9,114,789 

Belgium . 32,278,995 

Brazil . 3,631,012 

Cape of Good Hope. 4,761,140 

Cuba . 5,232,416 

Denmark . 1,784,642 

Egypt . 8,650,855 

France . 46,087,182 

Germany . 44,760,881 

Italy . 10,294,042 

Russia . 3,358,490 

Spain . 4,396,636 

Switzerland . 7,048,617 

United Kingdom. 259,833,392 

United States . 34,238,459 

Other countries . 21,296,477 


Total . 504,333,482 

See Butter ; Cattle ; Adulteration. 

Cheese Cloth, a thin, slazy muslin 
used by dairymen for covering cheeses. 
It is on the market in varied qualities as 
regards fineness of thread and closeness 
of weave. It is bleached or unbleached. 
Butter cloth is an extra fine quality of 
cheese cloth. Cheese cloth is used also 
for curtains, for covering walls before pa¬ 
pering, and for a variety of domestic pur¬ 
poses. The “gauze” used by surgeons in 
dressing wounds is cheese cloth convenient¬ 
ly folded and sterilized. Cheese cloth is 
dyed in plain colors for draperies and fan¬ 
cy work. 

Chelsea, chel'se, formerly a suburb, 
now a district of London, having somewhat 



































CHEMISTRY 


less than 100,000 people. It is situated 
on the north bank of the Thames and 
forms the river frontage of the Hyde Park 
district. Chelsea Hospital for old soldiers 
and the Sloan Botanic Garden are of in¬ 
terest. The latter is famed for fine old 
cedars. To Americans the chief interest 
of the neighborhood is its literary asso¬ 
ciations. Swift, Steele, Leigh Hunt, and 
George Eliot lived here. Locke and Ad¬ 
dison lived hard by. Thomas Carlyle 
and his wife, Jane Welsh Carlyle, lived in 
a quiet street. A statue of Carlyle has 
been erected on the Chelsea Embankment. 
He was known as the “Sage of Chelsea.” 
Chelsea was a favorite haunt of Henry 
VIII and his sixth queen, Catharine Parr. 

Chemistry, the science of the compo¬ 
sition of material things. Chemistry aims 
to answer such questions as, of what are 
water, candles, air, and grass, in short, 
all things made? Of how many elements 
is the world composed, and what is each 
like? It now enters largely into deciding 
what constitutes pure food. The subject of 
chemistry seems to have passed through five 
stages of development. 

The ancients were fairly well agreed, 
the Greeks learning from the wise men 
of India, that the world is composed of 
four elements; namely, air, water, earth, 
and fire. Air is warm and moist, water 
is cold and moist, earth is cold and dry, 
fire is warm and dry. The air is the op¬ 
posite of earth and water is the op¬ 
posite of fire. They were also well ac¬ 
quainted with a number of practical 
operations, such as dyeing, glassmaking, 
soapmaking and working in gold, silver, 
copper, iron, lead, and tin. They were 
skillful in compounding cosmetics, salves, 
ointments, medicines, oils, paints, ink, per¬ 
fumes, and poisons. The material of 
which all these substances, and many oth¬ 
ers, as wine and vinegar, in fact, the ele¬ 
ments of which all substances are com¬ 
posed, were in their opinion, simply air, 
fire, earth, and water. Aristotle, the great¬ 
est gatherer and arranger of knowledge 
known to antiquity, added a fifth some¬ 
thing, he did not know just what, but 
something outside of the four elements, a 
moving principle or force of some sort. 


The second period in the history of 
chemistry is the age of alchemy. Wise 
men believed that iron was formed by wa¬ 
ter running into a crack of the heated 
earth; that water became air by fine sub¬ 
division; that fire turned to air when it 
went out; that air turned to mist, and 
mist turned to earth. Naturally they 
sought ways of turning cheap substances 
into valuable ones. The Egyptians, the 
Greeks, and the people of the Middle Ages 
were as fond of wealth as we are today. 
An enormous amount of making and car¬ 
rying and buying and selling went on 
much as it does now. Gold and silver 
were prized. If all substances were at 
bottom fire, earth, air, and water, or, if 
not these, some other half dozen elements, 
and if one substance could be converted 
into its elements, and then by taking out 
part of one element or putting in more 
of another be changed into some other 
substance, why not become wealthy at a 
stroke by making gold and silver out of 
base metals? It is not surprising, then, 
that the alchemists of Egypt, Greece, Ara¬ 
bia, and of all Europe for a thousand years 
melted, heated, and stirred, added to and 
took from, trying to make gold out of 
sulphur or copper, and silver out of mer¬ 
cury. Many an enthusiast worked with 
furnace retort and crucible thinking him¬ 
self on the verge of discovery. Many an 
imposter announced that the discovery 
was his. A feverish belief prevailed that 
the secret was out. If not known here, it 
certainly was known yonder. Fortunes 
were sunk in hopes of multiplying them. 
Needy princes borrowed and bestowed on 
alchemists that their coffers might be filled 
with streams of shining gold. Sir Walter 
Scott uses this delusion with good effect 
in describing the character of Douster- 
swivel in the Antiquary. Alchemy now 
seems to us a feverish craze, but in reality 
it was quite as sensible as many get-rich- 
quick schemes of the present day. The 
chief feature to be regretted is that men of 
science wasted their time so long and were 
diverted from making progress. 

The third period of chemistry is noted 
for a theory that disease can be cured by 
chemicals. This theory came into vogue 


CHEMISTRY 


shortly after the discovery of America, and 
was part of the general stir of that time. 
The theory in brief is that the human body 
is made up of certain chemical materials, 
and that disease and illness are due to 
wrong relations between these elements— 
too much of one or not enough of another 
—and that it is the proper business of the 
physician and chemist to discover and ad¬ 
minister the medicine that will establish 
harmony. One writer thought that these 
constituents of the body were mainly mer¬ 
cury, sulphur, and salt. Too much sul¬ 
phur gave rise to fever and the plague. 
An excess of mercury in the system was 
indicated by paralysis and depression, 
while diarrhoea and dropsy were due to 
an over supply of salt. In cases of dropsy 
the apothecary must take salt out of the 
system, or put in more mercury and sul¬ 
phur. Of course, alchemy still ran its 
course; but the new theory of chemistry 
was a distinct step forward in that it pro¬ 
claimed a higher motive. The chemist 
spent his time in making medicines rather 
than gold, and led the way to a more 
critical study of the nature of various 
plants and minerals with a view to their 
use as remedies. Chemical laboratories in 
the modern sense of the word, laboratories 
for investigation, date from this period. 

The next period in the development of 
chemistry is the phlogistic period,- during 
which a new theory of fire or combustion 
prevailed. According to this theory, fire 
is the outrush from burning stuff of phlo¬ 
giston or fire material. Thus, when a piece 
of coal burns the fire material is escaping. 
When this has all escaped ashes remain. 
A piece of wood, then, is made up of ashes 
and of this phlogiston, or fire material. 
The more nearly a substance could be con¬ 
sumed the more nearly it was composed of 
pure phlogiston. If the phlogiston and the 
coal ash could be brought together again, 
a piece of coal would be the result. This 
theory was acceptable by reason of fitting 
into so many experiments. It was held 
by all the eminent scientists of that period. 
In one respect, however, the theory was 
not satisfactory, and that defect led to its 
downfall and to the ushering in of the pe¬ 
riod of modern chemistry. 


Coal and wood heated in an open re¬ 
tort do indeed throw off a something, be 
it phlogiston or what we please to name 
it. Whether the wood chars slowly or 
bursts into a flame, all that is left is a 
trifle of ashes almost as light as air. With 
coal and many other combustible materials 
the result is the same and was satisfac¬ 
torily explained by the theory that phlog¬ 
iston or fire material had been driven out 
by heat; but when iron or any other met¬ 
al, that was not vaporized by heat, was 
subjected to intense heat in an open cruci¬ 
ble, just as wood was heated, the metal 
grew heavier instead of lighter. Instead 
of driving off phlogiston, heat seemed to 
have added something to the metal. It 
seemed as though heat drove the greater 
part of wood and coal out to unite with 
something in the air, and that heat in¬ 
vited that something in air to enter iron 
and other intensely hot metals. When 
oxygen, that something in the air, was ac¬ 
tually discovered and described, even 
though by men who were unaware of the 
service they were performing, the founda¬ 
tion of modern chemistry was laid and has 
not been shaken seriously since. Accord¬ 
ing to modern ideas, the mystery of 
fire which had been a puzzle for centuries 
is simply the uniting of the substance, usu¬ 
ally some form of carbon, with the oxy¬ 
gen of the air. Metals, intensely heated, 
attract oxygen, thus gaining in weight. 

Chemistry now recognizes, not four ele¬ 
ments, but over twenty times that number. 
Air is a mixture of several elements, wa¬ 
ter is a combination of two elements, 
separately invisible; fire is the uniting of 
two elements; and earth contains all the 
elements. Instead of striving to change 
iron and copper into gold, and mercury 
into silver, chemists now teadh that, al¬ 
though elements may be combined into an 
infinite variety of substances, gold and 
silver and iron and mercury and many 
other substances are simple elements, and 
that no element can be destroyed or 
changed into another element. At the very 
basis of modern chemistry is the theory 
that each element, and hence the world, is 
made up of infinitely small particles, called 
atoms; far too small to be seen singly even 



John Dalton. 



Justus Liebig. 



Laurent Lavoisier, 


II-9 


CHEMISTS 


John Berzelius, 
































CHEMISTRY 


under the most powerful microscope. 
These minute atoms are of different kinds 
—oxygen atoms, hydrogen atoms, copper 
atoms, iron atoms, gold atoms, sulphur 
atoms, silver atoms—all different. Atoms 
are exceedingly sociable and cling together 
in infinitely small groups called mole¬ 
cules. An atom will not leave the com¬ 
pany of its associates unless thrown in with 
company it likes better. If similar atoms 
unite, we have an element, gold or oxy¬ 
gen, etc. If dissimilar atoms unite, as 
when atoms of hydrogen unite with half 
as many atoms of oxygen, we have a com¬ 
pound—in this case, water. An atom is 
unchangeable. Atoms of copper may shift 
about and be mixed as molecules today 
with zinc to form brass, and tomorrow be 
combined with chlorine to form a white 
powder; or they may combine with vine¬ 
gar to form green, poisonous verdigris; 
but atoms of copper are still atoms of cop¬ 
per, and they are never anything else. The 
number of atoms of gold never changes. 
All the skill of man cannot make a gold 
atom or blot one out of existence. 

The following table gives the names of 
elements with symbols and the theoretical 
weight of an atom as compared with the 
weight of an atom of hydrogen: 


Name 

Symbol. 

Atomic 

Weight. 

Actinium. 

Aluminum. . . . 

.A1 . 

. 26.9 

Antimony. . . ., 

.Sb. 

.119.5 

Argon. 

.Ar . 

. 40.? 

Arsenic. 


. 74.45 

Barium. 

.Ba . 

.136.4 

Beryllium. .. . , 

.Be . 

. 9.0 

Bismuth. 

.Bi . 

.206.5 

Boron. 

.B . 

. 10.9 

Bromine. 

.Br . 

. 79.34 

Cadmium. 

.Cd . 

.111.55 

Caesium. 

.Cs . 

.131.9 

Calcium. 

.Ca . 

.39.8 

Carbon. 

.C . 

. 11.9 

Cerium. 

.Ce . 

.138.0 

Chlorine. 

.Cl . 

. 35.18 

Chromium. . . . 

.Cr. 

. 51.7 

Cobalt. 

.Co . 

. 58.55 

Columbium. . . 

.Cb . 

. 93.0 

Copper. 


. 63.1 

Erbium. 

.E . 

.164.7 

Ethereon ?.... 



Fluorine. 

.F . 

. 18.9 

Gadolinium. . . 

.Gd . 

.155.8 

Gallium. 


. 69.5 

Germanium. . . 

.Ge .. ... 

. 71.9 

Glucinum. 




Name. 

Gold. 

Helium. 

Symbol. 

.Au . 

.Lie . 

Atomic 

Weight. 

.195.7 

. 4. ? 

Hydrogen. 

.H . 

. 1.0 

Indium. 

.In . 

.113.1 

Iodine. 

.I . 

.125.89 

Iridium. 

.Ir . 

.191.7 

Iron. 

.Fe . 

. 55.5 

Krypton. 

.Kr . 

. 59.? 

Lanthanum.... 


.137.6 

Lead. 

.Pb*. 

.205.36 

Lithium. 

.Li . 

. 6.97 

Magnesium. . .. 

.Mg. 

. 24.1 

Manganese. 


. 54.6 

Mercury. 

.Hg . 

.198.5 

Molybdenum. . . 

.Mo. 

. 95.3 

Neodymium. . . . 

.Nd . 

.142.5 

Neon. 

.Ne . 

. 20.? 

Nickel. 

.... Ni . 

. 58.25 

Niobium. 

See Columbium 


Nitrogen. 

.N . 

. 13.93 

Osmium.. 


.189.6 

Oxygen. 

.O . 

. 15.88 

Palladium. 

.Pd . 

.106.2 

Phosphorus. 

.P. 

. 30.75 

Platinum. 

.Pt . 

.193.4 

Polonium. 



Potassium. 

.K. 

.38.82 

Praseodymium. . 

.Pr. 

.139.4 

Radium. 


.225.? 

Rhodium. 

.Rh . 

.102.2 

Rubidium. 

.Rb . 

. 84.75 

Ruthenium. 

.Ru . 

.100.9 

Samarium. 


.149.2 

Scandium. 

.Sc. 

. 43.8 

Selenium. 

.Se. 

. 78.6 

Silicon. 

.Si . 

. 28.2 

Silver. 

.Ag . 

...... 107.11 

Sodium.. 

.Na. 

.22.88 

Strontium. 

.Sr. 


Sulphur. 

.S . 


Tantalum. 

. Ta . 

.181.5 

Tellurium. 

.Te . 


Terbium. 

.Tr . 


Thallium. 

.T1 . 


'thorium.. 

.Th . 


Thulium. 


.169.4 

Tin. 



Titanium. 

.Ti. 


Tungsten. 

. W . 


Uranium. 

.U . 


Vanadium. 

.Y . 


Xenon. 



Ytterbium. 


171 9 

Yttrium. 


cc 3 

Zinc. 


Q 

Zirconium. 




See also Pure Food ; Wiley. 

Chemnitz, kerr/nits, the chief manufac¬ 
turing town of Saxony. It is situated on 
the river of the same name fifty miles 
southeast of Leipsic. It is called the Man¬ 
chester of Saxony. It leads the world in 
the making of hosiery. There are also 




































































































































































CHENILLE—CHERRY 


large manufactures of calico, silks, wool¬ 
en goods, and jute bags. Chemnitz lies 
at the foot of the Erzgebirge, and is a 
center for mining supplies and machinery. 
The population has grown rapidly since 
the Franco-German war and is now over 
200,000. See Saxony. 

Chenille (she-nel') Cloth, a textile in 
use for curtains, portieres, and table covers. 
It is woven with a very fine cotton warp 
and a fringed cotton, wool, or silk thread 
for‘the weft. This gives a soft, fur-like 
effect. The fabric takes its name from 
the furry coat of the caterpillar, of which 
chenille is the French name. Until about 
1890 Scotch and Austrian manufacturers 
had a monopoly of the American chenille 
cloth trade. The material was woven on 
hand looms and was necessarily expensive. 
Since that time power looms have been 
introduced for its manufacture and Ameri¬ 
can factories now produce a superior and 
less costly cloth. The fringed thread or 
filling used for the weft is called “fur” or 
“chenille.” It is not an ordinary thread, 
but a sort of cord made in the loom. Two 
or three warp threads of wool or cotton 
are used. The fine silk weft threads are 
allowed to project at either side beyond 
the warp, and are afterward cut. By 
twisting, this narrow web is made to as¬ 
sume the shape of a cord with the wefts 
projecting in all directions from the cen¬ 
tral warp threads. When figures are to 
be produced, this weft is dyed in various 
colors at short intervals or steps, arranged 
with such nicety that, as the weaving pro¬ 
gresses, the colored parts fit into each 
other precisely, thus forming beautiful 
patterns. Silk chenille is used for a va¬ 
riety of fancy work. It is made in many 
sizes, from a thread scarcely larger than 
a fine yarn to that one-third of an inch in 
diameter. The larger varieties are “filled” 
very closely with the silk weft and are 
evenly trimmed. 

Cheops, ke'ops, the Greek name of the 
Egyptian king Khufu, who lived about 
2500 B. C. and is famous as the builder of 
the Great Pyramid. He was the second^ 
king of the fourth dynasty of the Old 
Egyptian Empire. Cheops has been identi¬ 
fied with Suphis or Shufu, a name appear¬ 


ing on certain Egyptian monuments. He 
is mentioned by some four or five other 
names in the works of early historians. 
The accounts of his character and life 
differ almost as much as his names. By 
some he is depicted as an impious man who 
closed temples and forbade the worship of 
the gods. The monumental inscriptions, 
however, represent him as building temples 
and repairing shrines. Whatever his life 
may have been, his tomb has stood for 
thousands of years, the greatest structure 
on earth. See Pyramid. 

Cherokee, cher-6-ke', a tribe of North 
American Indians belonging to the Iro¬ 
quois family. They were formerly in pos¬ 
session of the upper valley of the Tennessee 
and Cumberland Rivers. They lived in 
log huts and had about sixty-four towns. 
They sided with the British during the 
Revolution, but at its close acknowledged 
the sovereignty of the United States. Af¬ 
ter the war they began to move westward. 
Those in Georgia were driven out by the 
whites with the aid of government troops. 
In 1808 the Cherokee nation was organ¬ 
ized. A tract of land in Indian territory 
was set aside for them. The Cherokees 
proved very teachable, schools and missions 
were established among them, they learned 
various trades and several kinds of manu¬ 
facturing, and up to the outbreak of the 
Civil War held slaves. There were Cher¬ 
okees in both the Northern and Southern 
armies, and by both armies their country 
was ravaged. In 1906 the Cherokees and 
the four other civilized tribes terminated 
their tribal organizations and were received 
as citizens of the United States. See 
Indian Territory; Chickasaws; Choc¬ 
taws; Seminoles; Creeks. 

Cherry, a fruit tree belonging, with the 
plum, to the rose family. Our garden 
cherries are from European stock. Cher¬ 
ries are cultivated as far north as the south¬ 
ern part of Norway. In Germany and 
other continental countries cherry trees 
line the roadsides. The fruit is sold to a 
contractor. The pickers use long step- 
ladders in their work; they refer tourists 
to the foreman who vert politely sells 
them at a moderate price as many large, 
black, meaty cherries as they want to pay 


CHESAPEAKE BAY—CHESS 


for. We have several American wild cher¬ 
ries. The black cherry is a large tree in 
many localities. The fruit is bitter. The 
wood is used for expensive furniture. The 
wood of the red cherry also is desirable, 
but the tree is too small for lumber. A 
dwarf sand cherry sometimes fruits when 
less than a foot high. The choke cherry, 
with cylindrical clusters, comes in the fall 
after birds have taken the red cherries, 
and is welcome in spite of its puckering 
qualities. 

Several proverbial expressions show that 
cherries have had a place in homely life 
for centuries. “As like as two cherries,” 
is expressive of similarity. “Making two 
bites of a cherry,” is a sermon on unnec¬ 
essary effort. “As red as a cherry,” and 
“cherry red,” indicate the favorite kind 
of cherry. Cerise, the name of an exquisite 
color, is French for cherry. 

Sweet cherries and sour cherries are cul¬ 
tivated thoughout the apple states as door- 
yard and orchard fruits. In California 
cherries are subordinated to other fruits, 
yet 300 cars of fresh cherries and 170,000 
cases of canned cherries are shipped dur¬ 
ing the season. 

Chesapeake Bay, the largest inlet on 
the Atlantic Coast. It is 200 miles long and 
from 4 to 45 miles in width. It lies with¬ 
in the borders of Virginia and Maryland. 
The promontories of Capes Charles and 
Henry at its entrance are twelve miles 
apart. The bay is of great depth. It re¬ 
ceives the waters of the James, the York, 
the Rappahannock, the Potomac, the Sus¬ 
quehanna, and many smaller streams. 
Newport News, Alexandria, Washington, 
Annapolis, and Baltimore are situated on 
its borders, or at the head of estuaries. 
The waters of the Chesapeake are famous 
for the finest oysters and terrapin in the 
world. The reedy shallows are the haunt 
of innumerable waterfowl, including the 
celebrated canvasback duck. Shooting is 
carried on chiefly from blinds or reed-cov¬ 
ered boats. See Baltimore; Oyster; 
Potomac. 

Chess, a game of skill played on a 
checkered board of sixty-four squares. The 
game is said to be of Hindu origin. It 
was played in Hindustan 5,000 years ago. 


The Arabs learned the game from the 
Persians and introduced it into Spain and 
western Europe. The board resembles a 
checkerboard; all the squares are used. 
Each player has sixteen men, consisting 
of eight pawns and eight pieces, known as 
the whites and blacks. The pieces are the 
king, the queen, two bishops, two knights, 
and two castles, or rooks. They are ar¬ 
ranged as shown below. 

The pieces on the queen’s side are 
known as the queen’s bishop, queen’s 
knight, and queen’s rook; those on the 
other side bear the king’s name. The 
pawns are named by the pieces in front 
of which they stand. Thus we have the 
king’s pawn, the queen’s pawn, the king’s 
rook’s pawn, the queen’s bishop’s pawn, etc. 
The white queen stands at the left of her 
king; the black queen at the right of her 
king; so that corresponding pieces are op¬ 
posed to each other. In chess, men may 
be taken, not by leaping over them, as in 
checkers, but by occupying the space in 
which they stand. The intricacy of the 
game is increased greatly by the varying 
powers possessed by the different men. 

A pawn moves forward only. The first 
move may be for one or two squares; 
subsequent moves for one square only. A 
pawn may take any man belonging to the 

Black. 



Rook. Kmght. Bishop. Queen. King. Bishop. Knight. Rook. 

White. 

CHESS BOARD, 










CHESTER 


enemy by moving one space diagonally to 
the square occupied by that man. A knight 
has eight moves,—two squares forward, and 
one square sideways in either direction; two 
squares backward and one square sideways 
in either direction; two squares to the left 
and one square either forward or back¬ 
ward ; and two squares to the right and 
one square either forward or backward. As 
a knight may leap over any intervening man 
it is evident that he can remove a man of 
the enemy from any one of eight spaces. 

A bishop moves angularly any number 
of spaces forward or backward on the col¬ 
or on which it was originally placed. 

The rooks move any number of spaces, 
as far as the line is clear, either forward, 
backward, or sideways. 

The queen has the moves both of bishops 
and of rooks. 

The king may move in any direction, 
one square at a time (except in castling). 
Each king is permitted to castle once dur¬ 
ing the game. The player moves his rook 
to the square next the king, then leaps his 
king over the rook to the square on the 
other side. 

A player is not compelled, as in check¬ 
ers, to take a man within reach; but may 
refuse, if to his own advantage. When 
the king is situated so that he can be taken 
at the next move by an adversary’s man, 
he is said to be in check. If the player 
be unable to avoid the attack by taking 
the attacking man, interposing one of his 
own men, or retiring the king to a place 
of safety, he is checkmated, and loses the 
game. Any man properly situated may 
attack the opposing king. The king is 
also able to take any man of the enemy. 
If neither player is able to checkmate his 
opponent’s king, the game is drawn. 

It is not practicable to explain the rules 
of chess in a brief article, but a full ex¬ 
planation with illustrative games may be 
found in Hoyle’s Book of Games. 

Chester, an ancient English city six 
miles on the road from Liverpool to Lon¬ 
don. It stands on a sandstone hill, It is 
laid out in the form of an oblong, and is 
surrounded by a wall of sandstone blocks 
seven feet in thickness and wide enough 
on top for two or three persons to walk 


abreast. Chester is one of the few Eng¬ 
lish cities where the old medieval walls 
are still practically in complete repair. The * 
name is from the Latin castra, meaning 
camp. Dorchester, Manchester, etc., are 
English names of similar origin. Chester 
is, indeed, an old Roman fortification, as 
indicated by the discovery of coins, in¬ 
scriptions, a statue of Pallas, Roman al¬ 
tars, and the like. 

Next to the Roman antiquities in inter¬ 
est is Chester Cathedral. The ground plan 
is that of a cross. The main body is 355 
feet long by 75 feet wide. The transept is 
200 feet long. The vaulting rises to a 
height of 78 feet. The exterior has notable 
ranges of windows and is marked by a 
square central tower. The cathedral is 
of special interest in that it combines every 
variety of English medieval architecture 
from Norman to the latest pointed style. 
Architectural contrasts have been com¬ 
bined attractively and create an agreeable 
impression. 

The two main streets of Chester cross 
each other at right angles and terminate 
in massive gates. These streets were ex¬ 
cavated by the Romans to a depth of 
eight or ten feet below the general level. 
Rows of houses, half timber, half mortar 
work, with curiously carved gables, are 
reached by steps from the street below. 
The upper story of each house projects 
about sixteen feet over the lower story, and 
is supported by pillars, thus forming a 
covered colonnade or footway running the 
entire length of the street. All in all, 
Chester is one of the most peculiar and in¬ 
teresting cities in England. Tourists 
landing at Liverpool run to Chester and 
stay over for a night on their way to Lon¬ 
don. The town is the seat of Cheshire 
County, a rich agricultural region, famous 
for Cheshire cheese. The population of 
the city in 1908 was about 39,000. 

The name of Chester Plays is given to a 
collection of mystery plays founded on 
scriptural subjects. They were represent¬ 
ed by the guilds of Chester at Whitsun¬ 
tide, and ran three days. These plays 
appear to belong to the same generation as 
the Passion Play at Oberammergau. 

See England. 


CHESTERFIELD—CHEVY CHASE 


Chesterfield, Earl of (1694-1773), an 
English officeholder. He held various 
’positions under George I, as gentleman of 
the bedchamber to the Prince of Wales, 
ambassador to Holland, and lord lieutenant 
of Ireland. He wrote essays, critical and 
humorous, as well as a series of letters to 
his son,—little essays full of worldly wis¬ 
dom, shrewd advice, caustic comment, and 
insincerity. Though unprincipled, he was 
eloquent in his manner, and posed as a 
patron of letters. He pretended to en¬ 
courage Samuel Johnson in the publication 
of his dictionary. When Dr. Johnson be¬ 
came convinced of the earl’s duplicity he 
finished the work without his aid. At 
its publication Chesterfield attempted to 
revive the old relationship. Dr. Johnson 
published an open letter to him, which is 
considered the most scathing and caustic 
of the sort in literature. A single sentence 
must suffice by way of quotation: 

Is not a Patron, my Lord, one who looks 
with unconcern on a man struggling for life in 
the water, and, when he has reached ground, 
encumbers him with help? 

Lord Chesterfield was not without politi¬ 
cal penetration. Concluding a letter prior 
to the French Revolution, he writes, “In 
short, all the symptoms which I have ever 
met with in history previous to great 
changes and revolutions in government now 
exist and daily increase in France.” 

See Johnson, Samuel. 

Chestnut, a nut-bearing tree closely re¬ 
lated to the oaks and beeches. A flatten¬ 
ing of the sides of the fruit is due to their 
clustering two to three in a cup. The 
European chestnut is larger and coarser in 
taste than ours. The J apanese nut is 
smaller and of inferior quality. The Amer¬ 
ican chestnut is a straight forest tree, 100 
feet in height, with cream colored, heavy 
scented flowers, accused of causing hay 
fever. The flowers appear in June and 
July. After heavy autumn frosts the rough 
prickly burs, which correspond to acorn 
cups, open and “the sound of falling nuts 
is heard.” Two dwarf chestnuts, or chin¬ 
quapins, the one, in the main, eastern, and 
the other southern, bear a solitary nut in 
each bur. They are earlier than the tree 
chestnut. They are delightfully sweet and 


wholesome. In southern Europe cnestnuts 
are ground into a coarse meal for bread. 
The chestnut tree is long lived. A very 
large tree on Mount Etna has a girth of 
208 feet. Chestnut timber lasts like oak. 
The bark is valued by the tanner. In al¬ 
lusion to a worm-eaten chestnut, the term 
“chestnut” is applied to a worn out pun, 
stale joke, an old anecdote, or to a state¬ 
ment repeated so often as to lose its hold 
on the hearer’s interest. See Nuts. 

Cheviot Hills, a mountain range on the 
border line between Scotland and England. 
A central peak, to which Scott refers in 
his Marmion as “Cheviot’s mountain lone,” 
is 2,676 feet high. It stands 500 feet in 
the clear above Carter Fell, the next in 
height. The head waters of the Liddel, the 
Tyne, and some of the branches of the 
Tweed have their sources here. It is a fine 
grouse country, and, until recently, a haunt 
of the golden eagle. The upland pastures 
have given rise to a fine breed of sheep 
called cheviots, whence the name for a 
loosely woven woolen cloth used for suit¬ 
ings. The region is celebrated in story and 
song as the scene of border forays. Scott 
has occasion to describe its fastnesses a 
number of times in his tales. The cele¬ 
brated border ballad of Chevy Chase, found 
in Percy’s Rcliques, relates to the hunting 
or chase in the mountains of the Cheviot: 

God prosper long our noble king, 

Our liffes and safetyes all; 

A woefull hunting once there did 
In Chevy-Chace befall.' 

Chevy Chase, chev'i chas, a famous 
old English ballad of border warfare. The 
incidents recounted are not regarded as 
historical, although the story is probably 
founded on some actual encounter between 
Percy and Douglas. It has been confound¬ 
ed with the Scotch ballad, The Battle of 
Otterbourne, as the events celebrated are 
similar. There are two versions of the bal¬ 
lad. The older one is sometimes called 
The Hunting of the Cheviot. Both ver¬ 
sions may be found in Percy’s Reliques. 
The name Chevy Chase has been variously 
explained, as a corruption of a French 
word meaning a raid, and as derived from 
the name Cheviot Hills, and meaning the 
Cheviot hunting ground. See Ballad. 







CHEYENNE—CHICAGO 


The o(d song of Chevy Chase is the favorite 
ballad of the common people of England; and 
Ben Jonson used to say he had rather have 
been the author of it than o-f all of his works.— 
Addison, Spectator . 

Cheyenne, shl-en', a western Indian 
tribe belonging to the same family as the 
Delawares, Shawnees, Ojibways, and 
Blackfeet. When first known, they lived 
on the Sheyenne River in the eastern part 
of South Dakota. They were driven west¬ 
ward by the Sioux into the Black Hills 
country. Originally agricultural, they be¬ 
came possessed of ponies and acquired 
nomadic habits. Their raids extended as 
far southwestward as the borders of Mex¬ 
ico, and their claim to territory extended 
from the forks of the Platte to northern 
Montana. When the whites wanted the 
country the usual routine of treaties, broken 
faith, massacres, and extermination was fol¬ 
lowed. Hancock and Custer were engaged 
in subduing these Indians. The Cheyennes 
are physically a tall, well built race. At 
present there are somewhat over 1,000 of 
them on a reservation in the Tongue River 
valley, Custer County, Montana; others, 
perhaps 2,000 in number, are settled with 
their relatives, the Arapaho Indians, on the 
Canadian River in Oklahoma. The name 
is perpetuated in Cheyenne, the picturesque 
capital of Wyoming. See Indians. 

Chicago, a city of Illinois, situated on 
the west shore of Lake Michigan. It is 
the fourth city in the world. It is exceeded 
in population by London, New York, and 
Paris only. The population increased 
from 100 people in 1830 to 1,698,575 in 
1900, and to 2,185,283 in 1910,—the most 
wonderful growth on record. The terri¬ 
torial growth of the city is equally remark¬ 
able. A French trader’s house of squared 
logs, erected in 1774 during the Revolu¬ 
tion, was reinforced in 1804 by an Ameri¬ 
can stockade, called Fort Dearborn. It was 
built on a military reservation on the south 
bank of the Chicago River, adjoining the 
lake. After the War of 1812 a trading vil¬ 
lage sprang up under the protection of the 
fort. The original town was laid out on 
north and south lines in 1830. It occupied 
the oblong bounded by State, Madison, Des- 
plaines, and Kinzie streets. It embraced 
the junction of the two branches of the 


Chicago River, but did not reach the lake 
front. The census area of 1900 was over 
190 square miles, with a lake frontage of 
twenty-six miles. The territory west from 
Madison street south is South Chicago; 
from Madison street north is North Chi¬ 
cago ; from State street east is East Chi¬ 
cago; from State street west is West 
Chicago. 

When first occupied there was little to 
indicate that this was to be the site of a 
populous city. In 1823 the United States 
commander at Fort Dearborn wrote to the 
secretary of war as follows: “I have the 
honor to inform you that this post should 
be abandoned, because the county sur¬ 
rounding it is such that it is impossible for 
a population to live here sufficient to justify 
the expense of keeping a fort at this place.” 
The mouth of the river was obscured by 
a sand bar. The original trading post and 
stockade were located here. It was the lake 
terminus of a canoe route (by way of the 
Illinois River and the south branch of 
the Chicago) between the Great Lakes and 
the Mississippi. In 1833 Congress appro¬ 
priated sufficient money to cut a passage 
through the bar. All this is in marked con¬ 
trast with a present valuation of $30,000 
per front foot as indicated by a recent 
transfer of property at the corner of Jack- 
son boulevard and Wabash avenue. 

Immigration poured into the prairie 
region and Chicago became a lively lake 
port, a basis of farmers’ and small traders’ 
supplies. In 1852 the Michigan railway? 
reached the city. 

The harbor, the fact that northwestern 
railways almost necessarily pass through 
Chicago on the way eastward around the 
southern end of Lake Michigan, and the 
immense area of fertile territory that nat¬ 
urally buys and sells at Chicago, are the 
three natural factors that have caused the 
phenomenal growth of this city. 

Sunday evening, October 8th, 1871, a 
great fire swept the central portion of 
Chicago. It started in a barn on the west 
side, tradition says, by a cow’s knocking 
over a lamp. In twenty-four hours’ time, 
the heart of the city, over 2,000 acres, was 
a mass of ruin. The heat was so intense 
that iron work became as soft as wax, and 



CHICAGO 


stone structures crumbled like sand. The 
loss of life is estimated at 300 persons. The 
loss of property is placed at $187,000,000. 
The loss was so enormous that many insur¬ 
ance companies went to the wall, and yet 
$46,000,000 insurance was paid. Not¬ 
withstanding this setback, the demand for 
business blocks was so great that in two 
years’ time the city was rebuilt more solidly 
than ever. A stranger would not have 
noted that a fire had done any damage. 

A noteworthy event in the history of the 
city was a world’s fair held in 1892-3 
to commemorate the four-hundredth anni¬ 
versary of the discovery of America. It 
was called the Columbian Exposition. Six 
hundred sixty-six acres, having two miles of 
lake front, were set aside in South Chicago 
and beautified with lagoons and with 
buildings on an enormous scale. The array 
of structures was built of dazzling stucco 
work, and known as the White City. The 
largest building, that devoted to manufac¬ 
tures, covered an area of thirty-one acres. 
A central hall, in which great meetings (in¬ 
cluding a series of world’s congresses) were 
held, seated 75,000 people. Much taste 
was shown in adorning the buildings and 
grounds with statuary. Congress aided the 
fair with $5,000,000. The total cost was 
$43,000,000. The total number of admis¬ 
sions was 27,529,401. 

Chicago is governed by a mayor and a 
council of seventy members, two for each 
of its thirty-five wards. The city sends 
ten congressmen to Washington. Public 
education is administered by a board of 
over twenty members. The system includes 
a normal school, 18 high schools, and about 
250 elementary schools, 6,000 teachers, and 
300,000 pupils. The annual expenditure 
for schools is over $10,000,000, seven- 
eighths of which is defrayed by local taxa¬ 
tion. 

Each of the three great divisions of the 
city has a park board and a system of parks. 
The most noted parks are Jackson Park in 
South Chicago, Garfield Park on the west 
side and Lincoln Park, on the lake shore, 
in North Chicago. The latter contains 
a celebrated collection of wild animals and 
plant houses. Every visitor to Chicago 
should go to see the bears, monkeys, eagles, 


seals, elk, deer, ostriches, and the rare 
orchids of this park. A fine statue of Lin¬ 
coln, standing on a pedestal in front of a 
chair, is a prominent feature of the chief 
boulevard. A down-town park has been 
secured by filling in the lake front, and 
the Art Gallery is located in this tract. 
The new Field Columbian Museum is soon 
to be constructed here also. The total 
park and boulevard area of the city is over 
4,428 acres with plans for increase in 
the near future. 

City w r ater is obtained through tunnels 
or enormous intake pipes built far out un¬ 
der Lake Michigan, to a point where the 
water is pure. To avoid danger of con¬ 
tamination $40,000,000 has been expended 
in constructing a drainage canal from the 
mouth of the Chicago River, by way of 
the Des Plaines River, into the Illinois, 
twenty-eight miles away. A current of 
clear water from the lake now runs up the 
old channel of the Chicago carrying the 
sewage of the city toward the Mississippi 
instead of into Lake Michigan. The least 
width of the canal is 110 feet; the least 
depth, 22 feet. It is proposed to enlarge it 
into a ship canal. The figures required to 
express the extent of municipal undertak¬ 
ings are too large to mean much. There 
are over 4,000 miles of streets and alleys, 
and 1,500 miles of sewers. The city uses 
130,000,000,000 gallons of water yearly. 

A public library with branch reading 
rooms expends $284,000 a year, and guards 
nearly a third of a million volumes. Of 
other libraries, the Newberry on the north 
side has 260,000 books; the John Crerar, 
mainly scientific, has 89,000; the law li¬ 
brary in the Courthouse, 40,000; the Uni¬ 
versity of Chicago, 500,000. Chicago is 
well provided also with institutions of 
learning. Armour Institute, on the south 
side, a technical school, has an endowment 
of $4,500,000, and an enrollment of 1,300 
students. Lewis Institute, on the west side, 
has an endowment of over $2,000,000 and 
an enrollment of 1,400 students. The State 
University of Illinois maintains schools of 
medicine, dentistry, and pharmacy here. 
The University of Chicago, endowed by 
John D. Rockefeller, the oil magnate, has 
an endowment (1909) of about $17,000,- 



i 



Post Office 


CHICAGO 


































































































































' 

4 



, 

• . 



































t 


CHICAGO—CHICKADEE 


000 . It was opened in 1892. It is already 
one of the world’s great universities, 
with an attendance approximating 5,000 
students. While undenominational, its en¬ 
dowment requires that the balance of power 
must be held by Baptists. 

Chicago ranks next to New York in 
volume of commercial printing. In 1909 
one-tenth of the printing of the United 
States was done in the offices of Chicago. 
Over 25,000,000 telephone directories were 
printed for various cities. It is not uncom¬ 
mon for a mail order house to place an 
order with a job printer for 1,000,000 cat¬ 
alogs. The volume of the printing business 
for 1909 was estimated at $60,000,000. 

Chicago is one of the greatest wholesale 
and jobbing cities in the world. No other 
city equals Chicago as a railway center. 
Trains carrying express and trains carry¬ 
ing freight convey goods to all parts of 
the Mississippi Valley and the region west¬ 
ward. Chicago ranks second only to New 
York in the value of its manufactures. The 
census of 1900 gave 19,203 establishments, 
employing 262,621 wage earners and turn¬ 
ing out $888,000,000 worth of manufac¬ 
tures a year. One-fourth of the farm 
machinery used in the Union is made at 
Chicago. The largest hog, sheep, and 
cattle markets and the largest meat pack¬ 
ing industries in the world are here. In 
1908 the stockyards received 3,305,000 cat¬ 
tle, 422,000 calves, 7,715,000 hogs, 1,148,- 
000 sheep, and 85,500 horses and mules. 
Receipts of poultry products are heavy. 

The census of 1910 gives Chicago a pop¬ 
ulation of 2,185,283. According to the re¬ 
port of the city statistician the residents are 
three-fourths foreign, under which term he 
includes children whose parents were born 
abroad. The residents represent nearly 
forty European and Asiatic countries 
grouped as follows: 

Americans (including persons whose 


parents are not foreign-born) . 699,554 

Germans . 563,708 

Irish . 240,560 

Poles . 173,409 

Swedes . 143,307 

Russians . 123,238 

Bohemians . 116,549 


These are the large groups, but thirty 
other nationalities are included in the list. 


The Chinese number 1,801, and the Jap¬ 
anese only 257. It is predicted freely that 
the population will reach 5,000,000 ere 
the year 1940 arrives. 

The following additional statistics are 
significant of Chicago’s recent growth and 
present commercial importance: 


Manufactures— 

1900 . $789,000,000 

1905 . $955,000,000 , 

1910 . $1,782,935,000 

Wages, 1909 . $240,000,000 

New investments, 1906-9. $200,000,000 

Deposits in banks. $810,000,000 

Railroads—- 

Trunk lines. 25 

Passenger trains daily. 1,600 

New buildings yearly . 9,000 

Cost of same. $80,000,000' 

Northwestern station . $20,003,000' 

La Salle hotel. $6,500,000' 

Grocery stores, number of. 5,200' 

Saloons, number of. 7,300' 

Saloon receipts yearly . $115,000,000' 

Elevator capacity, bushels. 54,000,000' 

Bank clearings, 1911.$13,821,387,0001 

Wholesale trade . $1,892,949,000' 

Insurance losses . $4,901,000 

Receipts of lumber, board feet. . 2,577,000,000 

Real estate transfers . $140,000,030 

Fur sales. $19,003,000 

Library circulation, volumes. 2,500,000 

Live Stock Receipts—- 

Cattle . 2,932,000 

Calves . 410,000 

Hogs ....’ . 6,614,000 

Sheep . 4,440,000 

Horses . 9,300 

Customs receipts . $10,142,634 

Telephones . 207,000 

Deaths per 1,000 people . 14 


Chicago University. See Chicago. 

Chickadee, or Titmouse, a small bird 
of the nuthatch family. There are within 
the boundaries of the United States some 
seventeen species of titmice, with nearly 
as many races or subspecies, so that there 
is no portion of the country that does not 
have one or more forms. The western 
coast region is peculiarly rich in repre¬ 
sentatives of this family. The chickadee 
of literature, or the black-capped chicka¬ 
dee, is a trifle over five inches in length. 
The top or back of the head and the throat 
are shining black. Other parts are gray or 
whitish. It ranges from the mountains of 
North Carolina to the northern timber 
line of British America, retiring south¬ 
ward on the arrival of winter. It builds a 







































CHICKADEE—CHICKASAW 


tiny nest of moss and plants down in a 
hole in an old stump or tree, from the 
height of one’s head up to fifteen feet. 
There are from five to eight white eggs, 
speckled at the larger end with cinnamon 
spots. Speaking of its identification, Chap¬ 
man says, “When most birds were strangers 
to me, I remember thinking what a blessing 
it would be if every one spoke his name 
as plainly as does this animated bunch of 
black and white feathers. No need of a 
textbook to discover his name; with win¬ 
ning confidence he introduced himself, and 
probably for this reason he has always 
been my best friend among birds.” The 
chickadee is a constant resident. Few see 
the little bird in summer, but later the 
wood chopper seldom fails to see this bunty 
little friend hunting his frozen dinner of 
insects’ eggs and larvae in the fresh pile 
of brush and branches. His busy day, day, 
day, and cheery Chickadee, chickadee, dee, 
dee, dee, are one of the delights of a sunny 
winter’s day in the woods. 

The examination of 289 stomachs of the chick¬ 
adee shows that its food consists of 68 
per cent of animal matter (insects), and 32 per 
cent of vegetable matter. The former is made up 
of small caterpillars, and moths and their eggs. 
Prominent among the latter are the eggs of the 
tent-caterpillar moths, both the orchard and forest 
species. As these are two of our most destructive 
insects, the good done by the chickadee in devour¬ 
ing their eggs needs no comment. During the 
winter months, the chickadee’s food is made up 
of larvae, chrysalids, and eggs of moths, varied 
by a few seeds, but as spring brings out hordes 
of flying, crawling, and jumping insects, the 
bird varies its diet by taking also some of these. 
Flies and bugs (Diptera and Hemiptera) are the 
favorites until the weather becomes quite warm, 
when beetles and small wasps are also taken. 
Among the bugs may be mentioned the plant 
lice and their eggs which are eaten in winter. 
The beetles nearly all belong to the group of 
Rhyncophora, or snout beetles, more commonly 
known as weevils. These insects are mostly of 
small size, and nearly all of them are known as 
pests by the farmer or fruit raiser. Seventeen 
of them were found in one stomach. The plum 
curculio and the cotton boll weevil may be taken 
as fair samples. Grasshoppers do not at any 
time constitute an important element of the food 
of the chickadee as they are evidently too large for 
so small a bird; moreover they are for the most 
part terrestrial insects, while the bird is essen¬ 
tially arboreal. Small wasps and ants are eaten 
to some extent. Spiders constitute quite an impor¬ 
tant element of the food and are eaten at all 
times of the year. The birds evidently find them 


hibernating in winter as well as active in sum¬ 
mer. The vegetable food of the chickadee consists 
largely of small seeds, except in summer when 
they are replaced by pulp of wild fruit. The 
wax from the seeds of poison ivy (Rhus radicans ) 
is eaten during the winter months, but the seeds 
themselves are not taken. In this respect the 
chickadees differ from most other birds which 
swallow the seeds whole.—U. S. Department of 
Agriculture. 

Chickamauga, chik-a-maw'ga, a creek 
in northern Georgia and Tennessee. It 
empties into the Tennessee River near the 
city of Chattanooga. September 19th and 
20th, 1863, it was the scene of a bloody 
battle. General Bragg, reinforced by 
Longstreet, fought the three corps of Rose- 
crans under Thomas, McCook, and Crit¬ 
tenden, and penned him up in Chattanooga. 
Had it not been for Thomas, “the Rock 
of Chickamauga,” the Union forces would 
have fared ill. Over 100,000 men were en¬ 
gaged. Fully a third of the number were 
reported as killed or missing. Some brig¬ 
ades lost over half of their men. The bat¬ 
tle-ground, covering an area of eleven 
square miles, has been ceded to the gen¬ 
eral government by the states of Georgia 
and Tennessee for a national park. It was 
dedicated in 1895, on the anniversary of 
the battle. A large number of monuments, 
memorials, and marks have been erected 
already to commemorate the valor of both 
sides. 

Chickasaw, a branch of Indians al¬ 
lied to the Creeks, Seminoles, and Choc¬ 
taws. The whites under De Soto found 
them occupying the headwaters of the Tom- 
bigbee and Yazoo rivers, with a trail to the 
Mississippi River at Memphis, 160 miles 
away. As the country settled up they sided 
with the English against the French. They 
were induced to cede one tract of land 
after another. The last cession was dated 
1834. They were removed to the eastern 
part of the Indian Territory, where they 
form the Chickasaw nation, one of the 
federated Indian tribes of the territory. 
Even here, over 100,000 whites have 
crowded in to their territory. As the 
Chickasaws number less than 6,000 the re¬ 
sult is not difficult to foresee, though at 
present many are farmers and stock-raisers 
living in a fair degree of comfort. See 
Indians. 


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CHICKEN—CHICLE 


Chicken, a common barnyard fowl. All 
varieties of chickens are thought to have 
originated from the jungle fowl of south¬ 
eastern Asia. There are eighty-seven 
standard varieties raised in this country. 
They are divided into several classes, 
which, for practical purposes, may be re¬ 
duced to four, as follows: 

1. The general purpose, or American 
chicken. Of these the Plymouth Rock is 
celebrated for its graceful figure and up¬ 
right carriage. It is a very handsome bird 
with fine grey and white plumage. The 
Wyandottes are also fine birds, not quite 
so large as the preceding. These two 
kinds, all qualities considered, are the most 
desirable where appearance, good habits, 
abundance of eggs, and dressed poultry 
are desired. The Plymouth Rock origi¬ 
nated in Massachusetts; the Wyandotte in 
New York. 

2. The Brahmas, Cochins, and Lang- 
shans, introduced from Asia, are heavy, 
hardy breeds, considered very desirable for 
the table. They are somewhat larger than 
the American chickens, but are not as good 
layers. 

3. The so-called Mediterranean class, 
including the Leghorns, Minorcas, and 
Spanish chickens, are abundant layers. 
The Leghorns are probably the most pro¬ 
lific chickens known. They are light eat¬ 
ers and are active and healthy. Their 
eggs are smaller than those of American 
chickens, and they are considered less de¬ 
sirable for the table. 

4. Ornamental breeds, Bantams, Jap¬ 
anese, Polish, and Games. The bantam is 
remarkable for its small size and exceed¬ 
ingly pugnacious disposition. The game¬ 
cock, of which there are several varieties, 
is a tall, gaunt bird, armed with a large 
spur. It is reared chiefly for cock-fight¬ 
ing. It is still kept for that purpose in 
some parts of this country. It is a pop¬ 
ular source of amusement in Malasia and 
many other regions. 

Few realize the enormous proportions 
to which the chicken industry of the world 
has risen. Speaking for the United States 
alone, the last census reported 233,598,- 
085 chickens. In eggs and poultry the 
chickens of this country for that year 


yielded $280,000,000. Cotton, our most 
valuable field crop, was worth but $260,- 
000,000. The American hog brought but 
$186,000,000 that year. The eggs, if 
crated, would have filled the refrigerator 
cars of a train 900 miles long. A good hen 
lays 200 eggs a year. 

Skillful raisers now depend on incuba¬ 
tors to hatch their chickens. In this way 
“spring” chickens may be put on the mar¬ 
ket the year around. Eggs require twen¬ 
ty-one days to hatch. 

One man in Ohio has a contract to fur¬ 
nish 300 spring broilers and 100 dozen 
eggs daily, year in and year out. He has 
30,000 Plymouth Rocks, 30 incubators, 
and acres of buildings. A chart of the 
chicken and corn-raising industries of the 
United States shows that the two are 
closely related. The corn belt is also the 
poultry belt. 

Chicken Pox, a contagious disease of 
childhood, accompanied by an eruption of 
the skin and often by fever. The disease 
seems to bear some resemblance to a mild 
form of small-pox, but is. considered to be 
without danger if the patient remains quiet 
for a few days. A child seldom takes 
chicken pox a second time. 

Chicle, chikl, a gum manufactured 
from the sap of the sapodilla tree. This 
tree is found throughout tropical Ameri¬ 
ca. The chicle industry is confined large¬ 
ly to southern Mexico and Yucatan. Un¬ 
der favorable conditions the tree grows to 
a height of seventy feet. During May 
and June camps are established in the 
sapodilla forests, and preparations are 
made not unlike those for making maple 
sugar. The natives make V-shaped cuts 
in the bark of the tree. A crude milky 
sap is collected. It is carried in pails to 
large kettles and boiled down. An average 
tree will yield about six pounds of the 
gum, but must not be tapped oftener than 
once in three years. Well prepared chicle 
is nearly white when fresh and clean. It is 
a tough, firm, aromatic, elastic gum. The 
best quality is worth a dollar a pound in 
camp. In 1908 Yucatan and Mexico sup¬ 
plied the United States with 4,000,000 
pounds of chicle. It is used in the manu¬ 
facture of high grade chewing gum. Up 


CHICORY—CHILD LABOR 


to the end of the year named about 30,- 
000,000 pounds of chicle had been im¬ 
ported by the United States. See Gums. 

Chicory, a perennial herb belonging to 
the composite family. It is a native of 
Europe. The leaves are not unlike those 
of a dandelion, but the plant sends up a 
tall, branched, flowering stem. The flow¬ 
ers vary in color, sky-blue predominating. 
Like the dandelion it has escaped from 
cultivation and is found along the road¬ 
side. It is of value chiefly for a long, car¬ 
roty root, much used as a substitute for 
coffee and as an adulterant of ground 
coffee. For this purpose the roots are 
washed, sliced, and dried in kilns. Chic¬ 
ory is put on the market, ground and un¬ 
ground. It is raised easily from the seed. 
From six to ten tons of roots are expected 
to the acre. American wholesalers import 
from 2,600,000 to 4,000,000 pounds of 
chicory root annually. See Coffee. 

Chief Justice, the presiding justice of 
the supreme court of the United States. 
The first chief justice was John Jay, who 
served 1789-1791. His successors were: 
Oliver Ellsworth, 1796-1800; John Mar¬ 
shall, 1801-1835 ; Roger Brooke Taney, 
1836-1864; Salmon Portland Chase, 1864- 
1873; Morrison R. Waite, 1874-1888; 
Melville W. Fuller, 1888-1910; Edward D. 
White, 1910. Salary, $13,000. 

Child Labor, bodily toil of children in 
gainful occupations. There is a mistak¬ 
en notion that we are so prosperous in 
America that children are not called upon 
to work. The United States Census Bu¬ 
reau issued a bulletin in 1907 in which the 
total number of American children be¬ 
tween the ages of ten and fifteen inclusive 
was placed at 10,502,000. Of this num¬ 
ber, 1,939,000 were engaged in breadwin¬ 
ning. The showing is a little more favor¬ 
able than that of 1900, but the question of 
how early and under what circumstancas 
children shall be allowed to work is far 
from settled. 

Investigation and legislation began in 
Europe. The tendency of employers to 
overwork children for the sake of profit 
became apparent to the world during the 
industrial revolution or shift to the factory 
system 1760-1830. Conditions in England 


at that time are described by West in his 
Modern History: 

The new factory system proved fatally cruol 
to women and children, who for a long time 
made up the greater portion of the employees. 
Parish authorities had the power to take children 
from pauper families, in order to apprentice them 
to employers; and destitute or dissolute parents 
sold their offspring into such service by written 
contracts. In the early years of the century 
gangs of helpless little ones from six and seven 
years upward, secured in this way, were auctioned 
off, thousands at a time, to great factories, where 
their life was a ghastly slavery. They received 
no wages; they were clothed in rags; their food 
was insufficient and of the coarsest kind, and 
often they had to eat standing at their work while 
the machinery was in motion. They were driven 
to work from twelve to sixteen hours a day, 
often by inhuman torture ; they had no holidays; 
and the few hours for sleep were spent in filthy 
beds, from which some other relay of little 
workers had just been roused. Schooling or 
recreation there was none; and the poor little 
waifs—girls as well as boys—grew up, if they 
lived at all, amid shocking and brutal immorality. 
When one batch of such labor had been used up, 
another was always ready, at practically no cost; 
and the employers showed a disregard for even 
the mere physical well-being of their “white 
slaves,” such as no negro-driver could ever afford 
toward his costly black chattels. 

The first child labor law of the world 
was passed by Great Britain in 1802. It 
passed Parliament in the face of vehement 
opposition. It forbade the employment 
of children in cotton and woolen mills 
more than twelve hours a day. In 1819 
Parliament tackled the problem again and 
forbade the employment of children under 
nine in factories, but left the hours of 
work for ten-year-old children at twelve 
per day. This seems a callous treatment 
of childhood, but we must remember that 
the burly manufacturer was in his seat in 
Parliament, and politicians then, as now, 
were reluctant to injure the interests of 
the manufacturer. Moreover, we should re¬ 
member that this was the first and the only 
humane child labor legislation that had 
been enacted. 

The history of child labor laws is a long 
one. Child labor is a difficult question to 
handle. In poverty stricken districts chil¬ 
dren must earn bread or be given bread, 
or they must die of starvation. The prog¬ 
ress of legislation in the United Kingdom 
is manifest in the Employment of Chil¬ 
dren Act of 1903: 


CHILD LABOR 


1. No child may work before six in the morn¬ 
ing or after nine at night. 

2. The carrying of heavy weights, and employ¬ 
ment in occupations likely to prove injurious to 
health are prohibited. 

3. The age for the prohibition of the employ¬ 
ment of children in theatrical performances is 
raised from seven to ten years. 

4. Local authorities (the councils of county 
boroughs, municipalities of over 10,000 inhabi¬ 
tants, urban districts with over 20,000 inhabi¬ 
tants, elsewhere the county council) are empow¬ 
ered to make by-laws, regulating all occupations 
of children. Separate regulations for street trad¬ 
ing may be enacted. 

Under authority of the last clause above 
over sixty boroughs have adopted fitting 
regulations. The more important of the 
by-laws adopted by the London County 
Council are: 

1. No child under eleven years may be em¬ 
ployed. 

2. Children engaged in industrial work at home 
may only be employed between 5 and 8 p. M. 

3. No child may be employed for more than 
three and a half hours per day, or for more than 
twenty hours per week. 

4. A child may not be employed in a laundry, 
or in connection with the sale or delivery of in¬ 
toxicating liquors, except where such liquors are 
sold in sealed vessels. 

5. A child under twelve years may not be em¬ 
ployed as a lather boy in any barber’s or hair¬ 
dresser’s shop. 

6. A girl under sixteen may not be employed 
in street trading except in the company of a 
parent or guardian. 

7. A child liable to attend school full time may 
not engage in street trading before 7 A. M., be¬ 
tween 8 a. m. and 5 p. M., or after 8 p. m., ex¬ 
cept when in company of a parent or guardian. 
Between April 1st and September 30th, the hour 
may be extended to 9 p. m. 

8. A boy engaged in street trading must wear 
a badge on the upper part of his right arm in 
such manner as to be conspicuous. 

A brief statement of the child labor sit¬ 
uation in various countries is interesting: 

Austria: Age limit twelve years. Hours of la¬ 
bor not to exceed eight. Night work be¬ 
tween 8 p. M. and 5 A. M. forbidden to 
women and children. 

Belgium: Age limit twelve years. Time limit 
ten to twelve hours. Boys may not spend 
more than ten hours underground, i. e. in 
mines ; nor work between 9 P. M. and 5 A. M. 
Females under twenty-one may not work un¬ 
derground. 

France: Age limit thirteen years. Time limit 
ten hours, eight underground. Females may 
not work underground. Children may not 
labor between 9 P. M. and 5 A. m. 

Germany: Age limit thirteen years. Time limit 
six hours. Night work forbidden. Parents 


may work their own children ten years of 
age in their own factories or shops not to 
exceed three hours per day or during school 
vacations four hours. Young children may 
run errands, serve milk, or deliver newspa¬ 
pers so far as these duties are not excessive 
and do not interfere with attendance at 
school. No female may work underground. 
In the coal districts boys fourteen years old 
may work underground seven hours. 

Italy: Age limit twelve years. Time limit elev¬ 
en hours. No female may work underground 
or more than twelve hours. The minister 
of agriculture may issue permits to children 
to work twelve hours in the planting and the 
harvest season. 

Switzerland: This is the country of the referen¬ 
dum. Age limit fourteen years, the highest 
in Europe. Time limit for all persons, eleven 
hours. Persons under sixteen years of age 
may not tend circular saws, drawbridges, 
steam boilers, dynamos, or work in danger¬ 
ous places or with dangerous chemicals, etc. 
Women and children are forbidden to work 
after eight at night and on Sundays. 

United States: In the United States no authori¬ 
ty has been granted the general government 
to regulate child labor, but valuable service 
has been rendered by investigations and re¬ 
ports. The several states have enacted laws. 
The age limit in the cotton states is quite 
generally fixed at twelve. South Carolina 
authorizes the employment of even younger 
children in case of poverty. In Louisiana, 
New England, New York, the North Central 
States, and on the Pacific coast, the employ¬ 
ment of children under fourteen is prohib¬ 
ited in factories. Many states forbid any 
employment whatsoever during school hours. 
The time limit runs from eight to ten hours 
per day, save that North Carolina permits 
eleven hours a day or sixty-six per week, 
and Pennsylvania (1905) permits five days 
of twelve hours each weekly. The several 
states employ inspectors whose duty it is to 
visit factories and shops and enforce the 
laws enacted for the protection of childhood. 

In nearly all cases, attendance at school 
for a part of the day is compulsory. 

There is no question that childhood 
should be devoted to sleep and play and 
reading and the lightest of work. Boys 
and girls required to labor at muscular 
work too early do not develop properly in 
body or in mind. Of all occupations for 
children, out-of-door farm work is the 
best; but it should not be allowed to in¬ 
terfere with proper sleep, sport, and school¬ 
ing. The number of children engaged in 
factories and other indoor breadwinning 
employments is large enough to render 
the reader thoughtful: 


CHILD—CHILD STUDY 


Austria (incomplete) . 46,000 

Belgium . 33,000 

France . 464,000 

Germany . 532,000 

Italy (incomplete) . 20,000 

Switzerland . 35,000 

United Kingdom . 200,000 

J apan . 34,000 

United States . 460,000 


In 1904 the number of operatives in 
the textile industry, cotton and woolen, of 
the United Kingdom was 1,026,378 per¬ 
sons. Of this number but 31,744 were 
boys and girls under fourteen years of age, 
and they were on half time, going to school 
for half a day. On the face of these re¬ 
turns the United States does not make a 
favorable showing. As a matter of fact, 
a part of our factory children work for a 
few weeks only. Large numbers are em¬ 
ployed in canning vegetables and fruits. 
In this way they earn a little ready money 
for books and clothing and are free to at¬ 
tend school the rest of the year. Never¬ 
theless, the employment of children in 
American factories and in trade and trans¬ 
portation has gained ground in twenty- 
six states since 1900, and requires atten¬ 
tion. 

See Factory System; Wages. 

“For oh,” say the children, “we are weary, 

And we can not run or leap. 

If we cared for any meadows, it were merely 
To drop down in them and sleep. . . .” 

They look up, with pale and sunken faces. 

And their look is dread to see, 

For they ’mind you of their angels in high places, 
With eyes turned on Deity. 

“How long,” they say, “how long, O cruel nation. 
Will you stand to move the world on a child’s 
heart— 

Stifle down with a nailed heel its palpitation, 
And tread onward to your throne amid the mart! 
Our blood splashes upward, O gold heaper, 

And your purple shows your path. 

But the child’s sob in the silence curses deeper 
Than the strong man in his wrath.” 

—Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 

Child,. Lydia Maria (1802-1880), an 
American writer of prose and verse. She 
was born in Massachusetts and died there. 
She came into notice through interest in 
the abolition movement. One of the first 
anti-slavery books published was her Ap¬ 
peal for the Class of Americans called Af¬ 
ricans. For several years she and her hus¬ 
band, Mr. Child, edited the National Anti- 
Slavery Standard. She wrote much for 


children. Among her writings may be 
mentioned. The First Settlers of New Eng¬ 
land, Flowers for Children, and Looking 
Toward Sunset. One of Mrs. Child’s well 
known poems is Thanksgiving Day: 

Over the river and through the wood— 

Now grandmother’s cap I spy. 

Hurrah for the fun ! 

Is the pudding done? 

Hurrah for the pumpkin-pie! 

Child Study, a phase of scientific in¬ 
vestigation taken up chiefly in connection 
with the training of teachers. Although 
the early philosophers and teachers com¬ 
mented upon certain traits of the child 
mind, it was left for the modern educator 
to do anything really systematic in this field. 
Rousseau was particularly enthusiastic in 
his advocacy of the theory that a child 
should develop in a natural and un¬ 
hampered way; and this was the inspira¬ 
tion for much of the present development 
along this line. Froebel, Comenius, and 
Pestalozzi were especially insistent that 
anyone who expected to teach the child 
should study him; while the method of so 
doing, by observation and experiment, 
came about in a large measure through the 
influence of Herbart, who felt that in this 
field certainly there was no place for intro¬ 
spection and speculation. 

The child study movement had its origin 
in Germany and has there reached its 
greatest development. Early in the last 
quarter of the past century attention began 
to be paid to it in the United States; and 
within a couple of decades it became an 
important element in our system of educa¬ 
tion. Specialists in this field have been 
developed in the various university depart¬ 
ments of education and psychology, and 
they are employed in other institutions to 
instruct prospective teachers, or are con¬ 
nected with larger city systems in directing 
the study of the children by the teacher. 
State normal schools include the subject in 
their courses, and the National Educa¬ 
tional Association has a special department, 
for child study. This is also true of most 
state associations. Thus is seen something 
of how widespread the movement has be¬ 
come. 

In its simplest aspects, child study may 











CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE—CHILE 


be taken up by any teacher or parent with¬ 
out special training or equipment (though 
this preparation is desirable). It means 
simply the observation of the child with a 
view to discovering how his senses develop, 
how his physical growth is related to his 
mental development, what defects he has 
in sight or hearing, and what are his inter¬ 
ests and disposition. This aspect of child 
study lends itself readily to the home, and 
every mother, to say nothing of the father, 
should find pleasure as well as great good 
in this fascinating study. Much of the lack 
of understanding between the adult and the 
young would pass away if but a little effort 
were made by the parent to know the de¬ 
veloping mind. This is particularly valu¬ 
able at the adolescent period where, with¬ 
out understanding, behavior at this time 
often seems inexplicable. (See Adoles- 
ence.) 

As a result of child study in the prepara¬ 
tion of the teacher, the subject matter of 
education and its order of presentation 
have become greatly modified. Interest on 
the part of the pupil is a determining factor 
both as to the matter and the time when 
offered. These depend upon each child 
and must not be arbitrary and dogmatic. 
The kindergarten and the various phases of 
manual effort have come in through child 
study. As a consequence, also, rigid 
discipline and corporal inflictions have 
yielded place to self government and the 
honor systems. 

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, a narra¬ 
tive poem in four cantos, by Lord Byron. 
The first two cantos were published in 
1812, the third in 1816, and the last in 
1818. The third canto is the best. The 
poem is autobiographical in style and de¬ 
scribes the impressions and reflections of 
a misanthropical young man traveling 
through southern Europe. See Byron. 

“In Childe Harold the scenic background to 
the somber figure of the pilgrim is Europe itself, 
brought before us with a sympathetic breadth, 
and truth unmatched in the history of the litera¬ 
ture.” 

Children of the Ghetto. See Zang- 

WILL. 

Chile, che'la, a republic of South Amer¬ 
ica. It lies between the Pacific Ocean 


and the Andes Mountains. It extends 
along the coast from Peru to Cape Horn 
for 2,629 miles, equal to the distance from 
Maine to California. Punta Arenas in 
Chilian waters is the most southerly town 
in the world. The northern end of the 
country lies in the belt of eastern winds, 
and the Andes rob these winds of all mois¬ 
ture. This part of Chile is therefore a 
dusty, rainless region, scorched by a trop¬ 
ic sun. It is a parched, plantless desert, 
but it abounds in deposits of nitrates of 
soda and in mines of iron and precious 
ores. Busy towns with electric lights and 
street railways are built up on the nitrate 
industry. The extreme southern region 
is rainy, cold, rocky, and barren, the home 
of a few rookeries of seals, penguins, and 
sea fowl. Between these extremes of tor¬ 
rid and of antarctic barrenness is a large 
extent of fertile soil with the productions 
and prosperity of the temperate zone. This 
region shades off, of course, into the other 
two. Wheat and other small grains, 
grapes, small fruits, and orchard fruits 
are cultivated in profusion. Cattle rais¬ 
ing, mining, and lumbering are the lead¬ 
ing industries. The population of the 
country is about 4,000,000; nearly half of 
the people live in towns. This includes 
many of those engaged in mining and fish¬ 
ing. Santiago, the chief city and capital, 
is situated in the uplands, about 2,000 feet 
above the sea. It is well built, with pub¬ 
lic buildings and educational facilities, 
parks, street railways, and electric lights. 
Valparaiso, half as large, is the seaport. 
Together they have a population of half 
a million, between that of Baltimore and 
San Francisco. 

The prevailing religion of the country 
is Roman Catholic, with tolerance for all 
sects. Schools are free, but the common 
people are still illiterate. The official 
language is Spanish. The foreign com¬ 
merce amounts to about $35,000,000 in 
imports, and $90,000,000 of exports. Great 
Britain gets nearly half the business; Ger¬ 
many nearly a third; and the United 
States a sixth. The chief exports are 
nitrate, copper, iodine, wheat, silver, leath¬ 
er, gold, hides, and wool. The mer¬ 
chants of Chile buy cloth, paper, oil, chem- 


CHILE—CHIME 


icals, and machinery abroad. There are 
2,800 miles of railway; half belongs to 
the state. There are 11,000 miles of tele¬ 
graph lines, largely owned by the state. 

Chile is calling for settlers. The Jap¬ 
anese are encouraged to come over, not 
•only as laborers, but as homesteaders. 
Chilean agents at Tokio (1907) offered 
forty acres of good land for every immi¬ 
grant, twenty acres more for each son of 
18 years and over, a yoke of oxen, a set 
of agricultural implements, and a sum 
of money equivalent to $15 per month the 
first year of residence. Already a consid¬ 
erable number of Japanese farmers have 
given up their diminutive holdings in Ja¬ 
pan to make new homes on the rich, un¬ 
occupied lands of Chile. 

Chile was formerly a Spanish province, 
but threw off the Spanish yoke in 1818. 
The present government is modeled on that 
of the United States. The president is 
chosen for five years and is not eligible 
for reelection. 

STATISTICS. 


Land area, square miles. 292,580 

Population . 3,254,000 

Santiago . 332,724 

Valparaiso . 162,447 

Concepcion . 55,330 

Iquique . 40,171 

Number of provinces . 23 

Members of state senate. 37 

Deputies . 118 

Salary of president. $6,000 

Valuation of property .$675,000,000 

Bonded indebtedness. $90,000,000 

Domestic Animals— 

Horses . 516,000 

Mules . 83,000 

Cattle . 2,500,000 

Sheep . 4,224,000 

Pigs . 216,000 

Goats . 343,000 

Exports . $90,000,000 

Miles of navigable rivers . 705 

Miles of railway. 3,288 

Manufacturing establishments . 2,829 

Capital invested. $46,000,000 

Operatives . 51,000 

Raw material . $34,000,000 

Output of manufactured goods. $62,000,000 

Saltpeter (1907) $70,000,000 

Tons of coal mined . 789,000 

Output of copper . $8,000,000 

Teachers in public schools . 4,520 

Pupils enrolled . 160,736 

Number of postoffices . 1,090 


Chillon, shilTon, a castle in Switzer¬ 
land. It was built 1238 by Amadeus IV 
of Savoy, and was long used as a state 
prison. The castle is at the eastern end of 
Lake Leman. It is situated on a rock 
almost surrounded by water. Chillon is 
the scene of Byron’s The Prisoner of Chil¬ 
lon: 

Lake Leman lies by Chillon’s walls: 

A thousand feet in depth below 
Its massy waters meet and flow, 

Thus much the fathom line was sent 
From Chillon’s snow-white battlement, 
'Which round about the wave enthralls. 

See Geneva, Lake of. 

Chiltern Hundreds, an English stew¬ 
ardship. The hundred is a division of 
many English counties dating from the 
time of Alfred. Very possibly it may have 
been a portion of a county supposed to have 
100 fighting men. The term was intro¬ 
duced into our middle colonies and still 
lingers in Delaware. The Chiltern Hun¬ 
dreds are a hilly game district of Buck¬ 
inghamshire which has long belonged to 
the crown. The stewardship of this dis¬ 
trict is now a nominal position, but being 
by tradition a position of honor and 
profit, its holder may not sit in Parlia¬ 
ment. As a member of Parliament may 
not resign, a member wishing to vacate his 
seat requests an appointment as steward 
of the Chiltern Hundreds. This appoint¬ 
ment releases him from Parliament. The 
steward may, of course, resign, which 
leaves the way clear for another appoint¬ 
ment. The royal assent is in this way 
obtained before a member may resign his 
seat in Parliament. See Parliament. 

Chimborazo, chim-bo-ra'zo, a snow- 
clad peak of Ecuador. It presents a mag¬ 
nificent spectacle from the Pacific, lifting 
its snowy hood 20,700 feet into midair. It 
attracted Humboldt’s attention in 1802, 
and he attempted its ascent, but was unfor¬ 
tunate enough to choose the wrong path 
and was stopped by a chasm 500 feet wide. 

Chime, a set of bells, usually five to 
twelve, tuned in a musical scale. They may 
be stationary and be struck by hammers 
played by a performer, or, as is, strictly 
speaking, the proper way for a chime, 
they may swing and be struck by a tongue. 
A bell tower and a chime of bells is a 


































CHIMAERA—CHINCH-BUG 


regular feature of the commercial towns 
and cities of the Netherlands. There are 
many fine chimes in France and in Eng¬ 
land. There is no sweeter sound than the 
music of a chime of bells floating across 
the country side. See Bell. 

Chimaera, ki-me'ra. See Bellero. 
phon. 

Chimney, an upright passage designed 
to carry away smoke and create a draft. 
It may be built of any non-combustible 
material, as brick, stone, or concrete. The 
design of the fireplace chimneys of the 
early settlers was brought from England. 
In wooded countries, they were built of 
short wooden logs, well plastered within 
with clay. Chimneys of stone masonry 
were a great improvement. The higher 
a chimney, the better the draft, as this de¬ 
pends on a difference in weight between 
the warm air of the chimney and the cold 
air on the outside. The enormous chim¬ 
neys in connection with factories are built 
to a great height to secure draft. A con¬ 
crete smokestack erected recently at Great 
Falls, Montana, is 506 feet high. Its di¬ 
ameter at the base is 78 feet; at the top, 
55 feet. The dust, or soot, is caught on 
vertical wires from which it is shaken into 
hoppers at the bottom and dumped 
into cars in a pit beneath. This is proba¬ 
bly the loftiest chimney in the world. If 
a chimney be too large to be heated it will 
not draw well. Masons formerly sur¬ 
rounded large chimneys with trestle work, 
but now build from the inside. Chimneys 
of a primitive sort were not unknown to the 
ancients, but the modern chimney may be 
regarded as an invention of western Eu¬ 
rope. 

Chimney Swallow. See Swift. 

Chimpanzee, a manlike ape of equa¬ 
torial Africa. Its arms are long; the hind 
toe acts like a thumb. It is smaller and 
more active than a gorilla. It usually 
walks on all fours with its fingers doubled 
under the palm of the hand, but by 
grasping its thighs with its hands, also 
walks erect, the most nearly so of all apes. 
The skin is yellow and is clothed with 
shining black hair which hangs at a con¬ 
siderable length about the head and shoul¬ 
ders. The chimpanzee is fitted for climbing. 
11-10 


Its natural food consists of fruit and 
birds’ eggs. The female brings forth its 
young on a rude platform of sticks put 
together in a lofty tree-top and abandoned 
as soon as the young is able to accompany 
its parent. The chimpanzee feeds chiefly 
at night, and is dreaded by planters, whose 
banana plantations are likely to be ruined 
by the nocturnal visits of these destructive 
animals. It is the most human of all apes. 
It can be taught in captivity to eat with a 
knife and fork and to perform many 
tricks requiring not only powers of imita¬ 
tion, but intelligence and judgment. See 
Gorilla; Orang-Utan; Monkey. 

China. See Chinese Empire. 

China Clay. See Kaolin. 

China Silk, a plain-woven silk manu¬ 
factured on the hand looms of China, 
Japan,.and India. The same thread is used 
for both warp and weft, the weaving is 
done evenly, and the finished product pos¬ 
sesses a natural luster. As the spinning is 
done by hand also, there are imperfections 
in the thread which produce certain irregu¬ 
larities in the fabric. These irregularities 
make it possible to distinguish real China 
silk from imitations produced by machine 
spinning and weaving. The Japanese silk 
is superior in smoothness and softness to 
that from China. In the factories of Japan 
and China two men working all day will 
weave three or four yards of silk and re¬ 
ceive in payment for their labor about ten 
cents apiece. The imitation “china silk” 
produced by machinery in the United 
States is neither so soft, so lustrous, nor 
so durable as the hand weave. It does not 
show uneven threads. 

Chinch-Bug, an insect noted for its de¬ 
structive effects in grain fields. The adults 
are blackish with white wing covers. Six 
of these bugs placed end to end would 
scarcely measure an inch. They spend the 
winter under cornstalks, straw, or any oth¬ 
er rubbish, and lay their first eggs in early 
spring in grain fields on the roots or lower 
part of the stalks. The young are hatched 
in about twelve days. The nymphs, as they 
are called, are red in color. They are like 
the parent, save that they are very small 
and are without wings. They feed on the 
roots of the grain for a time; then attack 


CHINCHILLA—CHINESE EMPIRE 


the stalks and blades. In about two 
months from the laying of the egg the 
entire generation, numbering millions in a 
badly infested field, have their growth, and 
start on the march for new pastures where 
they at once lay eggs for a second brood. 
Sometimes their advance may be stayed 
by a ditch into which they tumble; if 
holes be dug at ten foot intervals in the 
bottom of the ditch the bugs will collect 
in them and be destroyed. Their only 
natural check seems to be a contagious 
disease which carries them off in multi¬ 
tudes. The various agricultural experi¬ 
ment stations are making an effort to 
check this pest by introducing diseased 
bugs in localities where the chinch-bug is in 
vigorous condition. It is estimated that 
the extermination of the chinch-bug would 
add $100,000,000 to the annual productiv¬ 
ity of American farms. Of field crops rye 
is the grain least subject to this pest. Rice 
may be saved by flooding. See Fly; In¬ 
sects; Bug; Hessian Fly. 

Chinchilla, a small rodent reminding 
one of the field mouse, the chipmunk, and 
the coney. It is about ten inches in length, 
with half as much to be added for its tail. 
It lives in colonies in the Andean region. 
It is clothed with beautiful, pearly gray 
fur, greatly in demand for muffs, linings, 
ladies’ capes, and the like. The chinchilla is 
trapped for its fur by the Indians who sell 
to the traders in the towns. The high 
prices prevailing have led to a marked 
diminution in the numbers of this inof¬ 
fensive animal. In 1905 1,461,200 chin¬ 
chilla skins were exported at $29.90 per 
dozen; in 1908 the number fell to 38,000 
skins, though the price had risen to an 
average of $43.85 per dozen. 

Chinchona. See Cinchona. 

Chinese Empire, a vast country of east¬ 
ern Asia, composed of China proper and 
four provinces. For an account of the 
provinces, the reader is referred to the 
articles on Manchuria, Mongolia, Tur¬ 
kestan, and Tibet. Chinese statistics 
are, at best, but an estimate. The States¬ 
man's Year Book for 1909 estimates the 
area of China proper at 1,532,420 square 
miles, and the area of the entire empire 
at 4,277,170 square miles. Estimates of 


the population cannot be depended upon. 
The latest official estimate given out by 
the Chinese themselves in 1911, however, 
reports the population of China proper at 
329,542,000. This estimate gives China 
proper a population of 214 per square mile. 

Topography. China proper is a com¬ 
pact and fertile country. It has 2,500 
miles of seacoast, with numerous good har¬ 
bors. The best way to carry the geogra¬ 
phy of China in mind is to regard it as 
a series of parallel valleys or river plains, 
running to the Pacific Ocean. The interior 
of the country about the head waters of 
these rivers is hilly or mountainous, and 
is practically unknown to travelers. The 
lower valleys are broad, alluvial plains, 
like those of the Mississippi, and are ex¬ 
ceedingly fertile. The great cities are 
situated on these rivers or on harbors near 
their mouths. At a distance of 100 miles 
from the coast, the PIoang-Ho and the 
Yang-tse-Kiang are connected by the 
Grand Canal, 1,000 miles in length—the 
greatest canal system in the world. The 
soil of China is, for the most part, a rich 
red or yellow clay. In the north central 
part there are vast areas covered to a 
great depth with a peculiar, fertile soil 
called loess. It is believed to have been 
formed by a gradual accumulation of dust* 
carried by winds from the elevated table 
lands of central Asia. The Chinese are 
exceedingly industrious. When a hillside 
is too steep for cultivation, they form a 
series of broad steps or terraces, so that 
no part of the country may be useless. 

Minerals. China is rich in minerals, 
especially in coal. The most extensive 
coalbed known lies in the great bend of 
the Hoang-Ho. Gold, silver, and copper 
are found in limited quantities. There is 
an abundance of mercury and iron. Little 
is known of the lead, tin, and zinc which 
are believed to exist. Inexhaustible beds 
of kaolin, or porcelain earth, have given 
the country its reputation for chinaware. 

Flora and Fauna. The country is so 
large that it is difficult to characterize the 
plants and animals in a general descrip¬ 
tion. There are said to be over 700 dif¬ 
ferent birds and about 200 mammals. 
Tigers and leopards are still found on the 



22 23 25 26 30 

1. Woman’s shoe for normal foot. CHINESE ART. 2. Shoe for bound foot. 

3 & 4. Opium pipes. 5. Head-dress of empress. 

6 & 7. Heads of pikes. 8. Battle ax. 9. Two sabres in one scabbard. 10. Sword- 
stick. 11 & 12. Ornaments. 13. Girdle clasp of wife of mandarin. 14. Porcelain 

vase. 15. Fan. 16. Tea service. 17. Black lacquered vase inlaid with mother-of-pearl. 
18. Old tea-canister, carved soapstone panels. 19. Written characters, new style. 20. 
Tin-tso coral ornament from the hat of a mandarin’s wife. 21. Ornamental pin. 22. 
Ear pendant of glass and coral, with tassel of silk. 23. Carved bamboo cup. 24. Pen¬ 
dant of necklace. 25. Pin, gold and enamel. 26. Gold ornamental pin. 27. Engraved 
wooden comb. 28. Ladies’ handbag. 29. Embroidery. 30. Textile fabric. 

































































































































CHINESE EMPIRE 


Manchurian border. The bear, the lynx, 
the badger, the marten, and the weasel, as 
well as the elephant, rhinoceros, and the 
tapir, are still found in certain localities. 
Chinese pheasants have been imported into 
this country. The native home of the pea¬ 
cock is here. Eagles, hawks, and owls are 
found. The rivers teem with wild ducks 
and geese, swans and pelicans. The hand¬ 
some mandarin duck is a native of China. 
The cormorant has been trained by the na¬ 
tives to capture fish. A ring is put around 
its neck so that it cannot swallow. It 
dives from the prow of the keeper’s boat, 
pursues the fish with incredible rapidity, 
and brings them up in the pouch under its 
lower mandible. The catch of fish in 
the rivers and canals is large. The fish 
spawn in the rice fields when flooded. Our 
goldfish are from China. A mere list 
of trees and shrubs native to the country 
would occupy pages. A large number of 
our ornamental shrubs and varieties of 
fruit-bearing trees are from China. Of 
shrubs having special value, the most no¬ 
table are the tea plant and the mulberry 
tree, on the leaves of which the silkworm 
feeds. The pine, yew, and cypress, vari¬ 
ous oaks and the chestnut, and several 
palms are found in different parts of the 
empire. The plant most used for build¬ 
ing purposes, however, is the bamboo, to 
the article on which the reader is referred. 
The Chinese are famous fruit raisers, gar¬ 
deners, florists. Some of our garden plants 
were developed first in China. Of fruits, 
the orange, peach, pomegranate, quince, 
plum, and apricot flourish. The camphor 
tree is a native. We are indebted to Chi¬ 
na for many varieties of azaleas, camelias, 
hydrangeas, asters, lilies, and roses. 

Agriculture. Agriculture is the lead¬ 
ing industry. Rice is the principal crop. 
It is of two kinds—an upland rice, culti¬ 
vated after the manner of wheat, and a 
lowland rice, requiring irrigation. Two 
crops of the latter are raised yearly in 
the river plains of the south. The Chinese 
are exceedingly industrious and utilize 
every inch of land, going to the extent of 
setting out rice plants by hand. Their 
implements, however, are rude, and they 
object strenuously to any change either in 


methods or tools. The sickle, the thresh¬ 
ing floor, and the winnow are still in use. 
Sugar-cane, indigo, the castor oil plant, 
wheat, barley, peas, beans, all sorts of 
vegetables, Indian corn, buckwheat, and 
tobacco are raised in suitable districts. 
Chinese cotton is of immense importance 
to the inhabitants, but is of rather inferior 
quality. Chinese silk, on the contrary, 
has greater firmness and strength, as well 
as a more beautiful luster than that of any 
other country. 

The great curse of China has been 
opium, and the poison affected not only the 
lowest, but the highest classes of society. 
Ever since the unrighteous Opium War, the 
growing of poppies had been increasing, 
but at the close of the Russo-Japanese War 
the government realized that the opium 
habit must be checked or China would be 
helpless to protect herself. In 1906 the 
government issued stringent regulations 
so that by the reduction of poppy growing 
at the rate of one-tenth a year, the use of 
opium should cease altogether in ten years. 
In 1907 they made an agreement with the 
British government whereby Great Britain 
agreed to reduce her importation from In¬ 
dia into China at the same rate. From 
the time of the decree no one was allowed 
to begin the use of the drug; all opium 
users, opium dens, shops, and the amount 
of their sales, were listed. All government 
officials, teachers and sailors were ordered 
to give up the drug, and those who dis¬ 
obeyed were banished. These stringent 
measures are having a pronounced effect, 
and already missionaries and others report 
whole districts formerly given over to the 
poppy now being under cultivation of rice 
and other cereals, while the effect upon 
the people themselves is even more marked. 

Industries. At some time in their his¬ 
tory the Chinese must have been inventive. 
They are credited with gunpowder, the 
mariner’s compass, printing from wooden 
blocks, looms, waterworks of bamboo cane, 
the construction of canals, artesian wells, 
as well as many other enterprises requir¬ 
ing inventive ability. At the present time, 
however, the Chinese workman is not in¬ 
telligent. It appears to be a part of the 
national religion to do as has been done* 


CHINESE EMPIRE 


No matter how laborious or clumsy a 
method may be, it never occurs to the Chi¬ 
nese workman or laborer that there might 
be an easier or a quicker way. Instead of 
gaining credit, workmen who were to pro¬ 
pose a better method would be attacked 
as irreligious. 

Language. In race and speech the 
Chinese are related to the inhabitants of 
Tibet, Mongolia, Manchuria, and Japan. 
They are supposed to have entered the 
country from central or western Asia. A 
few remnants of a preceding people still 
persist in certain mountainous districts, 
just as the Celts have persisted in the 
Highlands, in Wales, Cornwall, and Brit¬ 
tany. The Chinese language consists of 
words of but one syllable. Words seem¬ 
ingly of more than one syllable, as Pekin 
and Canton, are compound or agglutinated 
words like our stovepipe, sheepfold, and the 
like. In writing, a separate character is 
used for each of these monosyllabic words. 
The character has the same meaning in all 
parts of China and in Japan. It may, 
however, be pronounced differently, just 
as our figure 4 has the same meaning in 
all parts of the civilized world, but goes 
by many different names. It is necessary 
for a Chinese boy to learn the meanings 
of about 50,000 characters. They are ar¬ 
ranged in vertical columns instead of in 
lines running crosswise of the page and 
are read up instead of down. Chinese writ¬ 
ings are perhaps the most ancient in ex¬ 
istence. If we except the Scriptures of 
the Hebrews, Chinese literature may be 
considered the most extensive and impor¬ 
tant produced in Asia. All officeholders 
must be highly educated. 

Religion. The prevailing religion of 
the people is Taoism, a sort of ancestor 
worship. Many profess a form of Bud¬ 
dhism. The state religion is a system of 
ethics taught by Confucius, who lived 
about 550 B. C. Reverence for things 
as they are, obedience to parents, and an¬ 
cestor worship are carried to an extreme. 
More attention is bestowed on the dead 
than on the living. The family graves are 
protected with so much veneration and 
take up so much space as to interfere 
seriously with the agricultural productivity 


of the country. One of the chief diffi¬ 
culties to be experienced in the building 
of railways is the frenzied opposition 
of the inhabitants to the excavating of rail¬ 
way cuts that disturb their private burial 
grounds, which it is impossible for the most 
skillful engineer to avoid. In 1905, aside 
from Russian lines, China had but one mile 
of railway for each million of people. 

Habits and Customs. Owing, possi¬ 
bly, to the prevalence of earthquake shocks, 
dwelling houses are of one story. They 
are without windows. The material varies 
greatly in different parts of the country. 
It may be brick, straw, thatch, bamboo, 
or woodwork filled in with plaster. Adobe 
huts predominate. There are 4,000 walled 
towns. The houses of the wealthy consist 
of numerous chambers constructed fre¬ 
quently around an inside open court. In 
these houses, the floors are covered with 
matting and are kept scrupulously clean. 
Rich and well-to-do women dress at¬ 
tractively. To distinguish them from the 
peasantry, who walk and work, the feet 
of ladies were formerly bandaged from in¬ 
fancy, so as to prevent their growing. They 
hobbled about in delicate little high heeled 
slippers about large enough for a child 
three years old. With the awakening of 
China, however, this practice has been 
abandoned. Likewise by imperial edict in 
1910 all Chinamen who desired to, were 
permitted to cut off their queues. 

History. The connected history of 
China really dates from the conquest by 
the Manchus in 1644. They have fur¬ 
nished the most intellectual line of rulers 
that China has had, and in the early 
period of China’s relations with the west¬ 
ern world they were favorably disposed to¬ 
ward the European traders. In the reign 
of Emperor Tao-Kwang (1821-51), they 
began to realize that .they were exporting 
their choicest products, silks, tea, silver, 
etc., and receiving nothing in return but 
the harmful opium. The emperor accord¬ 
ingly tried to suppress the nefarious trade, 
but only succeeded in precipitating the 
Opium War (1840-42), with England, 
whereby the ports of Canton, Shanghai, 
Ning-po, Tu-Chow and Amoy were thrown 
open, and Hong Kong was ceded to Great 


CHINESE EMPIRE 


Britain. This increase of rights to for¬ 
eigners led to subsequent uprisings and 
revolts which threatened to destroy the 
empire itself had it not been for the as¬ 
sistance rendered by “Chinese” Gordon. 
The next decades marked attempted en¬ 
croachments by France, Russia, and Japan. 
Finally in 1894 China and Japan became 
involved in a war over Korea, in which 
China was defeated, and by the Treaty of 
Chefoo, 1895, she was obliged to cede 
Formosa and certain parts of the Liao¬ 
tung peninsula to Japan. New treaty 
ports were also opened to the world trade. 
China now set to work to reorganize her 
army, but the other nations were clamor¬ 
ing for territory, which they received. Rus¬ 
sia obtained a twenty-five year lease of 
Port Arthur and adjoining territory; Eng¬ 
land, to counterbalance this, secured the 
port of Wei-hai-wei across the straits from 
Port Arthur. France secured a long lease 
of the coast of the Bay of Kwang-chan- 
wan. Thesp various concessions aroused 
the anti-foreign element in China and led 
to the Boxer uprising of 1900. The armies 
of the United States, France, Great Brit¬ 
ain, Russia and Japan, marched upon Pe¬ 
kin to protect their legations. With the 
restoration of peace, all the foreign troops 
were withdrawn save those of Russia which 
remained in Manchuria for the alleged 
purpose of guarding the railway, until 
forced out by the Russo-Japanese War. 
In 1906, the government took measures to 
abolish the opium trade, and in 1907, the 
first definite steps were taken toward es¬ 
tablishing a constitutional monarchy. The 
Emperor Kwang-Hsu died in 1908, and 
his death was immediately followed by that 
of the dowager empress. The last emperor 
was Pu-Yi, born in 1906, the government 
being under the regency of his father, 
Prince Chun. 

Government. Down to 1906, China 
was an example of the most complete ab¬ 
solutism. In 1907 steps were taken leading 
toward parliamentary government, and in 
1908 an imperial decree authorized the 
establishment of provincial assemblies, 
for which elections were held the fol¬ 
lowing year. Meanwhile, a plan for a na¬ 
tional assembly had been approved which, 


however, had advisory powers only. 

The Chinese uprising against the Manchu 
government began in the latter part of 
1911. The rebels captured many cities, and 
province after province seceded until, by 
the close of the year, fourteen out of twenty- 
two had thrown off their allegiance, though 
the dynasty sought to preserve itself by 
granting every demand of the people. A 
new constitution was sanctioned by edict 
November 3, and on November 6 the regent 
abdicated. On December 14 the Nanking 
assembly, representing 14 provinces, elected 
Dr. Sun Yat Sen president of the Republic 
of China. On February 15, 1912, the em¬ 
peror abdicated the throne, and on the same 
day Dr. Sun Yat Sen resigned, and Yuan 
Shih Kai was elected president and was in¬ 
augurated at Peking, March 10. A cabinet 
was speedily formed with Tang Shao Yi 
as Premier. The Legislature consists of 
an upper house of 2 74 members elected by 
the provincial assemblies and a lower house 
of 596 elected by a restricted manhood suf¬ 
frage. The Republic has adopted a new 
flag on which the old dragon has been 
replaced by five stripes—crimson, yellow, 
white, blue, and black—to represent the 
five classes of people—Mongol, Chinese, 
Manchu, Mohammedan, and Tibetan. 

In June, 1916, Yuan Shi Kai died and 
Li Yuan Hung became president. 

Statistics. The following statistics 
are the latest to be had from trustworthy 
sources: 


Land area (China proper) . 1,532,420 

Number of provinces . 22 

Population (est., 1911). 439,214,000 

Pekin . 693,044 

Singan .....' . 600,000 

Tientsin . 800,000 

Hankau .. 820,000 

Nanking. 267,000 

Shanghai . 651,000 

Hangchau . *... 350,000 

Fuchau . 624,000 

Canton . 1,250,000 

Annual expenditure (1911).$263,250,000 

Bonded indebtedness.$615,000,000 

Cotton, pounds . 250,000,000 

Coal, tons . 9,000,000 

Salt, tons. 178,000 

Tea, pounds exported.199,700,000 

Iron ore, tons exported (1909). 87,701 

Total exports .$211,000,000 

Opium imported (1910).$36,100,000 

Miles of railway. 3,000 
























CHINESE GORDON—CHINTZ 


Number of postoffices . 9,000 

Newspapers . 200 

Chinese Gordon. See Gordon, 
Charles George. 

• Chinese Literature. See Literature. 
Chinese Wall. See Great Wall of 
China. 

Chinook, the name of an Indian tribe 
which formerly .lived near the mouth of 
the Columbia River. The term has been 
transferred to a warm, southwest wind 
which blew from the Chinook country to 
the region occupied by the Hudson Bay 
Fur Company at Astoria, Oregon. In 
Washington and Oregon a chinook is a 
southwest coast wind laden with the 
warmth and moisture of the Pacific Ocean. 
East of the Cascades and east of the 
Rocky Mountains a chinook is a warm, 
dry, westerly or northerly wind, coming 
down the east slopes of the mountains. 
It is dry because it has precipitated its 
moisture on the mountain tops, and it is 
warm because the air is crowded together, 
or condensed, in descending the moun¬ 
tain slopes. The warmth is due to the 
operation of a physical law, that com¬ 
pression, or shrinkage of bulk, warms any 
substance. A chinook is likely to set in 
at any hour of the day, and to continue 
from a few hours to several days. A 
continued chinook flows out several hundred 
miles from the mountain range. The 
Chinooks modify the winters of east¬ 
ern Oregon and Washington and of Mon¬ 
tana, Idaho, and Wyoming, the western 
parts of the Dakotas, and the northwes¬ 
tern provinces of British America. Oc¬ 
casionally a chinook, known as a winter 
thaw, reaches the Mississippi Valley, and 
something of the sort is noticeable on the 
eastern slopes of the Alleghenies. Simi¬ 
lar winds are known in Switzerland. The 
Chinooks are of great value to stockmen, 
who depend on standing grass for their 
cattle during the winter. Oftentimes a 
heavy fall of snow, followed by cold 
weather, renders it impossible for the cat¬ 
tle to get at the dried grass. When a warm, 
dry wind comes speeding down from the 
distant mountains, the snow and ice dis¬ 
appear in a marvelously short time, and 
the cattle are out on the plains and hill¬ 


sides, feeding abundantly, all danger of 
starvation happily averted. 

The cattle seem to anticipate the com¬ 
ing of a chinook. In times of cold and 
hunger they may be seen standing knee- 
deep in the snow with their heads turned 
toward the mountains, anxiously awaiting 
the arrival of relief. Near the mountains 
a chinook may be a heavy gale, but farther 
out on the plains, it subsides into gen¬ 
tle, light, delightfully warm puffs. The 
following graphic account shows the effect 
of a severe snowstorm on grazing cattle in 
Montana: 

The effect on grazing cattle in Montana was 
especially severe. Thousands of the helpless 
beasts wandered aimlessly over the hills searching 
in vain for food and shelter. As the days went 
by and no relief was afforded, their safety was 
a question of great moment. No food was ob¬ 
tainable, for the grasses upon which they were 
wont to subsist lay buried under thirty inches of 
snow. On the evening of December 1, 1896, the 
temperature at Kipp, Montana, was —13° F. 
The air was scarcely moving and the sky was 
clear. Suddenly over the edge of the mountains 
in the southwest appeared a great bank of black 
clouds, their outer edges blown into tatters by 
the wind. In a few minutes a short puff of hot, 
dry air had reached the plains and in the follow¬ 
ing seven minutes the temperature had risen to 
34° F. The wind increased in velocity to twenty- 
five miles an hour and the temperature rose to 
38° F. Within twelve hours every vestige of 
the thirty inches of snow had disappeared, leav¬ 
ing the hills bare and the plains covered with 
water. 

A rise of 20° F. in ten minutes is not 
unusual. 

Chinquapin, chm'ka-pm, an Indian 
name for the dwarf chestnut of the United 
States. This shrub ranges from Pennsyl¬ 
vania to Texas. The name is applied also 
to a shrub oak of the Sierra Nevada 
Mountains. 

Chintz, chints, the name under which 
printed cottons were imported originally 
from India. The word is from the Hin¬ 
dustani chhint, meaning spotted. The 
hand-woven, hand-printed chintz made in 
India is a coarse fabric of uneven threads. 
It is printed in old-fashioned designs and 
is finished without starch or dressing. 
The name is used at the present time 
among manufacturers for a species of 
glazed calico used for furniture covering 
and draperies. 




CHIPMUNK—CHIVALRY 


Chipmunk, a small striped American 
squirrel, half way between the true, or 
tree squirrel, and the gopher, or ground 
squirrel. Its Latin name signifies a stew¬ 
ard, and is expressive of its characteris¬ 
tic habit of storing away hoards of nuts, 
grains, and seeds, for use in time of 
scarcity. The chipmunk frisks in and out 
about stone walls, log piles, and stumps. 
It excavates long burrows beneath the 
frost line. Convenient chambers, or en¬ 
largements, are arranged at intervals in 
which it stores its supplies. A living room 
is furnished with a comfortable bed of 
leaves. Like its relatives, it has capa¬ 
cious cheek pouches in which it carries 
nuts, seeds, buds, and grain to its store¬ 
rooms. The storage instinct seems to 
have no limit. If a grainfield, or bin of 
grain, or a corn crib be at hand, it is 
said that a pair of chipmunks will se¬ 
crete a bushel of food, carrying, in fact, 
until the season drives them under ground 
to sleep until spring comes. His store 
of food is intended, it would seem, for 
springtime scarcity. The body of the 
Eastern species is about six inches long, 
with a slender tail nearly as long as the 
body. Its back carries five black stripes 
and two white ones. The Rocky Moun¬ 
tain species has the same number of dark 
stripes and four white ones. 

The chipmunk, on the shingly shagbark’s bough, 
Now saws, now lists with downward eye and ear, 
Then drops his nut, and, cheeping, with a bound, 
Whisks to his winding fastness underground. 

—Lowell, An Indian Summer Reverie. 

Chippewas, a tribe of American In¬ 
dians allied to the Delawares, Shawnees, 
and Blackfeet. They occupied a large 
territory surrounding Lake Superior. Nu¬ 
merous small bands are still found in this 
region. Nominally they live on reserva¬ 
tions, but they are to be seen paddling up 
and down the rivers and lakes almost any¬ 
where. They are preeminently children of 
the forest. They are skillful in the con¬ 
struction and use of birch bark canoes, 
and are great hunters, trappers, and fish¬ 
ers. Enmity existed between them and 
the Sioux for generations. The border 
line between the two tribes in Minnesota, 
as elsewhere, appears to have been the 


edge of the evergreen belt. Each made 
murderous forays into the territory of the 
other. The traveler by rail in the wood¬ 
ed region of Wisconsin and Minnesota not 
infrequently catches a glimpse of an In¬ 
dian lodge on the shore of a river or lake. 
A canoe is likely to be moored near by. 
Old clothes hang on the bushes. Dogs 
and papooses are in evidence. If the 
lodge be low and rounded, it is that of a 
Chippewa; if conical and pointed, it is 
that of a Sioux. Longfellow’s Hiawatha 
is the hero of the Chippewa or Ojibway 
nation. Chippewa is a favorite geographic¬ 
al name in the upper peninsula of Michi¬ 
gan, in Wisconsin, and in Minnesota. 
See Indian. 

Chiron, kl'ron, in Greek mythology, a 
learned centaur. The Greeks were fond of 
horses. Other mythological monsters were 
wholly devoid of good traits, but the cen¬ 
taur, half horse and half man, while sav¬ 
age at times, is represented often as wise 
and, to a greater or less extent, the friend 
of man. Chiron was instructed by Apol¬ 
lo and Diana, and became skilled, especial¬ 
ly in medicine, music, hunting, and the art 
of prophecy. Many renowned Grecian 
heroes were his pupils. He instructed 
Achilles, Hercules, Ulysses, Aeneas, and 
others. While chasing the boar Eryman- 
theus, the capture of which was one of the 
twelve labors assigned him by Eurystheus, 
Hercules had a fight with the centaurs, 
drove them from Mount Pelion, and pur¬ 
sued them into the abode of Chiron. Here 
an arrow from his bow accidentally 
wounded his old teacher, and Chiron suf¬ 
fered tortures from its poison. In pity 
the gods put an end to his mortal life, but 
he was placed among the stars as the 
constellation Sagittarius or The Archer. 
See Hercules. 

Chivalry, shiv'al-ry, a medieval system 
of military service. The term is akin to 
chevalier and cavalry, meaning funda¬ 
mentally a horseman. Chivalry consist¬ 
ed essentially of the order of knighthood 
to which ordinarily no one could gain ad¬ 
mission unless of good blood and fit char¬ 
acter and training. He must then be 
admitted by a knight in regular standing. 
Customarily a boy of good family was sent 


CHLORAL—CHLOROFORM 


to live in the family of some nobleman at 
the age of twelve. At first he was a 
page, and was required to wait on the 
ladies; then he became a squire and wait¬ 
ed on a knight. He practiced in the tilt 
yard, learning the use of armor and the 
sword, the management of a horse, and 
the handling of a lance.' It was his duty 
as a squire to follow his knight to battle, 
carrying his shield. At the proper age, 
especially if distinguished by some act in 
battle, he was knighted, or admitted to the 
order. This was a religious ceremony, 
including fasting, receiving the sacrament, 
and taking upon himself solemn vows to 
honor and defend women, to protect or¬ 
phans, to tell the truth, to refrain from 
slander, and to be loyal to his king and 
to the church. At the close of the ceremony, 
he knelt a squire, received a blow on the 
side of the neck or on the shoulder from 
the flat of a sword, and rose a knight. 
Not infrequently, a king might confer the 
honor of knighthood on the field of battle 
as a reward for bravery. 

Sir Walter Scott was a great admirer of 
chivalry. His hall at Abbotsford was 
hung with armor and mementos of this 
age. His tales are full of descriptions of 
knightly encounters and of the customs 
of chivalry. Although he paints in bright 
colors, his writings may be regarded as a 
trustworthy reflection of the best side of 
chivalry. 

Spenser’s Faerie Queene dwells upon the 
same tales of knightly adventure and cour¬ 
tesy. The knight’s armor rendered him 
a power for good or evil among common 
men. If he lived up to his vows he was 
a helper of the needy, a friend of the op¬ 
pressed. Too often, however, knighthood 
served as a protection in the commission 
of the vilest acts. Says the historian Free¬ 
man,—“Chivalry was above all else a 
class spirit.” 

See Armor; Cervantes; Spenser; 
Feudalism ; Castle. 

Chloral, a compound of chlorine with 
oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon. The chlo¬ 
ral of the druggist and physician is a com¬ 
pound of choral and water, and is termed 
hydrate of choral by the chemist. In this 
form it is a white, crystalline substance 


having an acrid taste and a pungent odor. 
In medicine, a dose of from five to twenty 
grains is sometimes given to produce sleep. 
It is thought that choral, introduced into 
the system, is acted upon by the alkali of 
the blood in such a manner as to liberate 
chloroform, which acts directly on the 
nerves of the brain. An overdose of 
chloral overdoes the quieting process and 
paralyzes the brain, the heart, and the 
lungs, and brings on death. Chloral is a 
standard remedy for insomnia, but it 
should on no account be taken, except un¬ 
der the advice of a competent physician. 

Chlorine, klo'rin, an elementary sub¬ 
stance. It never occurs free, but always 
in combination with other substances, very 
often with sodium. It is a poisonous, 
greenish gas about thirty-five and one-half 
times as heavy as hydrogen and two and 
one-half times as heavy as air. It has an 
offensive odor and irritates the nostrils 
when breathed. It may be liquefied by 
cold and pressure. Chlorine has a strong 
affinity for hydrogen, and, for that rea¬ 
son, is much employed in bleaching cot¬ 
ton and linen. It decomposes moisture by 
uniting with the hydrogen, leaving the 
oxygen free to neutralize the coloring ma¬ 
terial. This gas is destructive to animal 
and vegetable life because it absorbs the 
hydrogen of the water living things con¬ 
tain. Chlorine unites with metals and 
other substances to form a large class of 
compounds known as chlorides. Chloride 
of lime makes an excellent deodorizer or 
disinfectant, as it not only neutralizes of¬ 
fensive smells but kills bacterial germs. 
Chlorine enters into the composition of 
common salt from which it may be ob¬ 
tained. See Bleaching. 

Chloroform, a heavy, transparent, col¬ 
orless liquid composed of carbon, hydro¬ 
gen, and chlorine. It is prepared by dis¬ 
tilling a mixture of water, alcohol, and 
bleaching powder, or chloride of lime. 
Chloroform must be kept in the dark or 
it will decompose; it must be corked tight¬ 
ly or it will evaporate. It is used in the 
arts to dissolve rubber, resins, and fats. 
In medicine, it is administered in minute 
quantities. Its effects are akin to those 
of alcohol, but are more energetic. 


CHLOROPHYLL—CHOATE 


In surgery, chloroform is used to pro¬ 
duce unconsciousness during a painful op¬ 
eration. It was first used for this purpose 
by a Dr. Simpson of Edinburgh, 1848. It 
is administered by presenting a saturated 
sponge to the patient’s nose. The vapor 
spreads through the lungs and blood to all 
parts of the body. In a few moments the 
patient passes through all stages of al¬ 
coholic excitement into a helpless, we may 
say drunken, sleep, during which he is un¬ 
conscious of pain. The most painful op¬ 
erations may be performed without his 
knowledge—operations that otherwise 
could not be performed. Chloroform is 
an essential part of the army surgeon’s 
outfit, and does much to save the lives of 
men wounded in battle. It should be ad¬ 
ministered only by an assistant of expe¬ 
rience, as an overdose produces death. 
With proper precautions, however, its use 
is not dangerous. Only one person out of 
three or four thousand fails to come out 
from under the influence of chloroform. 
Ether is preferred by many surgeons. 

Keepers of dangerous wild animals, as 
lions or tigers, put them under the in¬ 
fluence of chloroform when it is neces¬ 
sary to handle them, to dress wounds, or 
to transfer them from one cage to another. 
It may be administered by fastening a sat¬ 
urated sponge to the end of a pole and 
pushing it into the cage under the ani¬ 
mal’s nose. 

See Ether; Surgery; Anaesthetic. 

Chlorophyll, klo'ro-fil, the green color¬ 
ing matter of plants. The term is Greek 
and means leaf green. Chlorophyll is a 
granular pigment contained in the living 
cells, especially the young cells, of plants. 
Sunlight is required to bring out its color. 
Plants kept in darkness for a time become 
white and waxy. The grains of coloring 
matter accumulate usually in the upper 
cells of a leaf, giving that surface a green¬ 
er color than the under parts. The reds 
and other brilliant colors of autumn foli¬ 
age are due to the combination of various 
minerals with the green pigment of chloro¬ 
phyll. Hardened tissues and autumn 
frosts facilitate the operation. Chloro¬ 
phyll is an important agent in the diges¬ 
tion of plant foods, its function being to 


combine into starch the carbon dioxide ab¬ 
sorbed from the air through the pores with 
the water taken up by the roots. Free oxy¬ 
gen is given off, thus serving as a purifier 
of the air. 

Choate, Joseph Hodges (1832-), an 
American lawyer and diplomatist. He 
was born at Salem, Massachusetts, and is a 
nephew of Rufus Choate. His education 
was received at Harvard University and 
Law School. He settled in New York 
where he acquired reputation rapidly as an 
orator and pleader at the bar. He was one 
of the Committee of Seventy which broke 
up the corrupt Tweed ring in the city gov¬ 
ernment of New York; conducted the in¬ 
come tax cases before the Supreme Court, 
and represented th^ United States in the 
Bering Sea Controversy. Under President 
McKinley, Mr. Choate was appointed Am¬ 
bassador to Great Britain, in which capac¬ 
ity he served until 1908, when he again 
took up the practice of law in New York. 

Choate Rufus (1799-1859), an Amer¬ 
ican lawyer, orator, and statesman. He 
was born at Essex, Massachusetts, Octo¬ 
ber 1, 1799, and died at Halifax, Nova 
Scotia, July 13, 1859. He was graduated 
at Dartmouth in 1819. He took up the 
practice of law at Danvers, but removed 
to Salem in 1828. He was elected to 
Congress in 1830 and again in 1832. He 
resigned in 1834 to enter an office in 
Boston. He succeeded Daniel Webster in 
the United States Senate in 1841, and 
served the unexpired term. Mr. Choate 
was a brilliant public speaker. After Mr. 
Webster’s death he was considered the ora¬ 
tor of the state and the leader of the Mas¬ 
sachusetts bar. His style was florid, his 
sentences long and involved. Webster 
himself once said, “When I was a young 
man, and first entered the law, my style 
of oratory was as round and florid as 
Choate’s. I do not think it the best. It 
is not according to my taste.” Mr. 
Choate’s style may be inferred from the 
following passage from his Eulogy on 
Webster: 

But there were fields of oratory on which, 
under the influence of more uncommon springs 
of inspiration, he exemplified an eloquence in 
which I do not know that he has a superior 
among men. Addressing masses by tens of 


CHOCOLATE—CHOLERA 


thousands in the open air, on the urgent politi¬ 
cal questions of the day, or designated to lead the 
meditations of an hour devoted to the remem¬ 
brance of some national era, or of some incident 
marking the progress of the nation and lifting 
him up to a view of what is and what is past, and 
some indistinct revelation of the glory that lies 
in the future, or of some great historical name, 
just borne by the nation to his tomb—we have 
learned that then and there, at the base of 
Bunker Hill, before the corner stone was laid, 
and again when from the finished column the 
centuries looked on him; in Faneuil Hall, mourn¬ 
ing for those with whose spoken or written elo¬ 
quence of freedom its arches had so often re¬ 
sounded ; on the rock of Plymouth; before the 
capitol, of which there shall not be one stone 
■ left on another, before his memory shall have 
ceased to live—in such scenes, unfettered by the 
laws of forensic or parliamentary debate; multi¬ 
tudes uncounted lifting up their eyes to him; 
some great historical scenes of America around; 
all symbols of her glory and art and power and 
fortune there; voices of the past not unheard; 
shapes beckoning from the future, not unseen— 
sometimes that mighty intellect, borne upwards 
to a height and kindled to an illumination which 
we shall see no more, wrought out, as it were, in 
an instant, a picture of vision, warning, predic¬ 
tion ; the progress of the nation ; the contrasts of 
its eras ; the heroic deaths; the motives to patriot¬ 
ism ; the maxims and arts imperial by which the 
glory has been gathered and may be heightened— 
wrote out, in an instant, a picture to fade only 
when all record of our mind shall die. 

Chocolate. See Cocoa. 

Choctaws, a tribe of Mobilian Indians 
related to the Seminoles, Chickasaws, etc. 
In 1540, when De Soto marched westward, 
they occupied a large extent of territory 
between their eastern neighbors, the 
Creeks, and the Mississippi River. They 
are said to have had forty towns and to 
have numbered 2,500 warriors. They op¬ 
posed his progress at Choctaw Bluff, Ala¬ 
bama. In the battle that followed twen¬ 
ty of De Soto’s men were killed, and two 
hundred wounded. The Choctaws were a 
corn-raising, peaceful people. They gave 
the settlers far less trouble than the war¬ 
like Creeks and the Chickasaws. Never¬ 
theless they were forced to migrate. Be¬ 
tween 1785 and 1837 they gave up 30,- 
000 square miles of land in exchange for 
$2,225,000 in money and goods, and 
moved to Indian Territory. There they 
became landholders. They established 
schools, governed themselves by a legis¬ 
lature, loafed, hunted, farmed, raised 
stock, and became quite civilized. They 


still number 10,321—rattier more than 
when the white man first found them. A 
few hundred still linger along the streams 
of the Mississippi. See Indians. 

Choir, kwlr, a body of singers organ¬ 
ized to render music in church services. 
Not infrequently the term is applied to 
those who lead congregational singing. 
A choir consists of at least four voices— 
soprano, alto, tenor, bass. In cathedral 
services the choir is divided usually into 
two sets of voices for responsive singing, 
one sitting on the north, the other on the 
south of the chancel. For a discussion of 
the term used in an architectural sense, the 
reader is referred to the article on Cathe¬ 
dral. 

Choke-Damp, the name given by miners 
to the suffocating gas formed by the ex¬ 
plosion of fire-damp. Also called black- 
damp and after-damp. Roughly speaking, 
fire-damp is a gas of carbon and hydrogen 
likely to explode in air. Choke-damp is 
a compound of carbon and oxygen not 
poisonous but incapable of supporting 
life. See Davy; Carbon Dioxide. 

Cholera, kol'er-a, an acute, infectious 
disease—not infrequently an epidemic. 
Like typhoid, malaria, and the bubonic 
plague, it is thought to be due to colonies 
of a bacillus. Though the germ theory 
has not been as yet accepted by all author¬ 
ities, it is settled fairly well that cholera 
is due to a spiral bacterium. Cholera 
is an Eastern infection known in the East 
Indies at the dawn of history, but it did 
not spread to Europe and America until 
1830 and later. It is often called Asiatic 
cholera. It has a peculiar way of making 
long leaps, leaving intermediate districts 
unmolested. The first symptom of cholera 
is vomiting, followed by griping pains in 
the stomach. The disease is very fatal. A 
large proportion of those attacked die with¬ 
in an hour or two. Opium, quinine, whis¬ 
key, camphor, and chloroform are some of 
the common remedies. Cleanly conditions, 
high, pure air, and simple food are pre¬ 
ventives. It is one of the diseases which 
medical science has not mastered. The 
introduction of germs is guarded against 
by rigid quarantine in seaboard cities. See 
Disease. 


CHOOSERS OF THE SLAIN—CHRIST’S HOSPITAL 


Choosers of the Slain, or Valkyrior, 

val-kir'i-or. See Odin. 

Chopsticks, utensils used by the Chinese 
to convey food to the mouth. The chop¬ 
sticks, two in number, are sticks of wood, 
bamboo or ivory about twelve inches in 
length and one-fourth inch in diameter. 
Both are held in one hand and are used 
with wonderful skill and ease. Americans 
who have lived in China and become 
accustomed to the use of chopsticks, con¬ 
sider them oftentimes of greater conven¬ 
ience than the fork. It must be remem¬ 
bered that, as Chinese food is served, a 
knife is unnecessary. 

Chopin, sho-pan', Frederic (1809- 
1849), a noted Polish pianist. A native 
of Warsaw. His later years were spent in 
Paris. He was a brilliant player and the 
composer of a large number of instrumen¬ 
tal pieces for the piano. A list of about 
eighty of his compositions, including a 
famous funeral march and many polonaises 
or Polish dance tunes, is well known to 
pianists. The peasant music of Poland 
proved a rich held for Chopin to whom 
the musical world is as truly indebted for 
finding, arranging, and recording Polish 
dancing music as the literary world is fo 
the compiler of the traditions of Robin 
Hood or of the Knights of King Arthur’s 
Round Table. 

Chorus, originally a dance in a ring, 
or a dance within an enclosure. The word 
came to be applied to a band of dancers. 
Then, probably because the dance was ac¬ 
companied with song, to a band of singers. 
The chorus of the Greek drama was a band 
of performers, represented as of age, sex, 
and condition appropriate to the play, who 
appeared as spectators of the entire action. 
The chorus occupied, in the theater, the 
position between the stage and the audi¬ 
torium. Through the coryphaeus, or lead¬ 
er, the chorus took part in the dialogue 
with the actors. When no actor was on 
the stage, the chorus sang such sentiments 
as would seem to have been suggested by 
the events presented, or supplied necessary 
information that could not be given in the 
regular speeches. As the members of the 
chorus sang they danced, or moved about 
the altar of Bacchus. The chorus was 


considered indispensable. At one time as 
many as fifty persons were included in the 
Greek chorus. Later the number was lim¬ 
ited to fifteen for tragedy, twenty-four for 
comedy. 

Chouan, shoo'an, a French word mean¬ 
ing screech owl. The term was applied as 
a nickname to the peasant leader of an 
insurrection in Brittany in 1792. His fol¬ 
lowers were subsequently called the Chou- 
ans. They rose partly by reason of pover¬ 
ty and partly out of loyalty to the royal 
family and to the church. They gave the 
young French republic much trouble by 
adopting guerilla tactics. They were not 
put down till 1800, nor wholly, in fact, 
till the restoration of the Bourbons in 1815 
gratified their wishes. The uprising of the 
Chouans in favor of the Bourbon family 
has points of resemblance to that of the 
Highlanders for the Stuarts. The two 
peoples are of the same blood. The lead¬ 
ing accounts in fiction are Balzac’s best 
novel, The Cliouans, and Victor Hugo’s 
novel, Ninety Three . See Celts ; Brit¬ 
tany. 

Chremhild, krem'hilt, heroine of the 
Nibelungenlied. See Nibelungenlied. 

Christ. See Jesus Christ. 

Christabel. See Coleridge. 

Christ’s Hospital, a celebrated charity 
school in Newgate Street, London. The 
word hospital formerly meant an institu¬ 
tion for furnishing hospitality to, or caring 
for, the needy. Hence the name was given 
frequently to charity schools. The school 
was founded in 1653 by Edward VI for 
orphan children. At some times as many 
as a thousand boys and girls have been 
in attendance, receiving board, clothes, and 
instruction. The boys wear a very noticeable 
uniform—a long blue woolen coat, with 
clergyman’s bands at the neck, a red leath¬ 
er belt, yellow silk stockings, low shoes, 
and no hats. From this costume, they have 
been called Bluecoat boys and the school 
is commonly known as the Bluecoat 
School. Many noted Englishmen received 
their early education at Christ’s Hospital— 
Coleridge, Lamb, and Leigh Hunt among 
them. In the days of Coleridge and Lamb, 
the life was a hard one. The food was 
poor and scanty, the work wearisome, hoi- 


CHRISTIAN IX—CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 


idays few, and floggings many and severe. 
In the Essays of Elia Lamb has written 
an account of this school and his friend¬ 
ships there, under the title, Christ’s Hos¬ 
pital Five and Thirty Years Ago. Christ’s 
Hospital has been for some years under a 
new and much improved scheme of man¬ 
agement. The result has been a great gain 
in its standing and influence. 

Christian IX (1818-1906), king of 
Denmark. Although not in the regular 
order of succession, Christian came to the 
throne of Denmark in 1863, succeeding 
Frederick VII. The early part of his 
reign was unfortunate in many respects. 
Although Schleswig had been guaranteed 
its own government under the personal rule 
of the Danish king, he incorporated it 
with Denmark. The people rose in revolt 
supported by those of Holstein. Bismarck 
seizing the opportunity, went to the assist¬ 
ance of the duchies and the result was 
their annexation to Prussia. The loss of 
Schleswig-Holstein antagonized the Danes 
against their king and this antagonism 
aroused Christian’s distrust of all popular 
government, a feeling that characterized 
his entire administration. As far as he 
constitutionally could he ruled always for 
the people, never with them. In spite of 
his ultra-conservatism he was popular with 
his subjects, but it was because they be¬ 
lieved in his personal sincerity while op¬ 
posing his political ideas. No other ruler 
of modern times has had as many im¬ 
portant family connections with the rul¬ 
ing houses of Europe. One daughter is 
empress dowager of Russia, the widow of 
Alexander III; Alexandra of England, 
wife of Edward VII, is another daughter; 
his son Wilhelm was elected king of the 
Hellenes in 1863, under the title of George 
I; his grandson Karl, son of the present 
king of Denmark, was elected king of 
Norway in 1905, under the title Haakon 
VII; and a granddaughter, Princess Maud 
of England, is married to Haakon; besides 
these there are a number of less important 
connections. In view of these things, it 
is small wonder that for years preceding 
his death, Christian IX was popularly 
known as the “Father-in-Law of all 
Europe.” 


Christian Endeavor, or more fully, 

the Young People’s Society of Christian 
Endeavor. It was organized February 2, 
1881, at the Williston Congregational 
Church, Portland, Maine, the pastor, Rev. 
Francis E. Clark, being the originator of 
the movement. Members sign a pledge, 
binding themselves to loyalty to Christ and 
the Church, to the daily reading of the 
Bible, and to the attendance upon the meet¬ 
ings of the society and church to which 
they belong. The actual work is system¬ 
atized under various committees. Dr. 
Clark, called affectionately “Father En¬ 
deavor Clark,” is chairman of a corporation 
known as the United Society of Christian 
Endeavor. District, state and national con¬ 
ventions are of frequent occurrence. The 
society has spread so widely that its consti¬ 
tution is now printed in thirty-two different 
languages. It is inter-denominational; 
Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, Con- 
gregationalists and many other denomina¬ 
tions contribute to its membership, al¬ 
though similar organizations with different 
names have been established in various 
churches. There are now about 57,000 
Christian Endeavor Societies with an ag¬ 
gregate membership not far from 4,000,- 
000. The national conventions bring to¬ 
gether an enormous number of delegates. 
See Baptist Young People’s Union; 
Epworth League. 

Christian Science, a system of theology 
and therapeutics developed by Mrs. Mary 
Baker Eddy. Mrs. Eddy states that she 
discovered the principle of Christian Sci¬ 
ence in 1866, through the study of the 
Bible, which book the denomination accepts 
as the inspired Word of God. It is difficult 
to state the creed or doctrines of Christian 
Science in a few words. Its fundamental 
principle is God—that is, an understanding 
of the true nature of God. Christian Sci¬ 
entists deny the existence of matter as a 
reality. All material things are but mani¬ 
festations of the mortal mind of man. The 
only true Mind is God, of whom man is 
the spiritual image and likeness. Disease, 
sin, poverty, in fact all evils are errors, 
having no more reality than have the terri¬ 
fying images we see in dreams. It is be¬ 
lieved that the cures wrought by Jesus 


CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 


Christ, were not miraculous but were in 
accordance with Divine Law, and Christ’s 
command to his disciples, “Heal the sick,” 
was a command not only to the twelve and 
to the seventy, but to all those of any age 
who acknowledge Him as their Master. 

The first Christian Science Church was 
established in Boston in 1879. It is known 
as the “Mother Church.” In 1894 the first 
church edifice was erected in that city at a 
cost of $250,000. Eight years after it was 
built, a larger structure became necessary. 
The church voted to apply any necessary 
part of $2,000,000 to this purpose. The 
extension, erected on a lot adjacent to the 
first church was dedicated in 1906, at 
which time 40,000 Christian Scientists as¬ 
sembled in Boston to attend the service. 
There were at that time in existence in 
various parts of the world 930 Christian 
Science Churches and Societies. Since 
then the denomination has issued no statis¬ 
tics, but its growth has been more rapid 
than at any previous period. The form 
of church government is congregational, 
that is, there is no central government. 
The manual of the “Mother Church” 
serves as a model for other church man¬ 
uals. No pastor is employed; a “First 
Reader,” and “Second Reader,” appointed 
from among the congregation for a period 
of three years, cqnduct the services. Al¬ 
most every church maintains a reading 
room where Christian Science literature 
may be read or purchased. A Board of 
Lectureship delivers lectures in various 
cities under the auspices of local churches. 
The Christian Science Publishing Society 
issues a weekly paper, the Christian Science 
Sentinel, and a monthly, The Christian Sci¬ 
ence Journal , founded in 1883. The Chris¬ 
tian Science Monitor is a daily newspaper. 
The first issue appeared November 24, 
1908. It is not designed to propagate the 
doctrines of the denomination, but is a 
regular newspaper, differing from other 
such sources of information in that nothing 
unwholesome or sensational ever appears. 

The instances are few in the world’s his¬ 
tory where a system of religious or philo¬ 
sophical teaching has made greater progress 
than has Christian Science. Although its 
principles may be rejected its influence has 


had its effect. It was the first step in the 
reaction from the intensely materialistic to 
the more spiritual mode of thought. As a 
result numerous movements of a more or 
less similar character have sprung up. Not¬ 
able among them is the Emmanuel Move¬ 
ment instituted by Rev. Dr. Elwood 
Worcester and Rev. Samuel McComb in the 
Emmanuel Episcopal Church at Boston. 
This movement resembles Christian Science 
only in the fact that it combines religion 
and therapy. Its theory is entirely another 
matter. Sin and disease are treated as reali¬ 
ties. The methods of healing employed are 
in accordance with the views of leading 
psychologists and neurologists. Moreover, 
no attempt is made to cure organic diseases. 
The plan of work in the Emmanuel Church 
has been followed by other churches of va¬ 
rious denominations throughout the coun¬ 
try and classes are organized for the moral 
and mental treatment of nervous disorders. 

Mind Cure, Faith Cure, Mental Science, 
Metaphysical Science, Metaphysical Heal¬ 
ing, New Thought, are terms one hears on 
every side. They designate various, though 
frequently rather loosely defined methods 
of the drugless healing of disease. Mrs. 
Eddy and the Christian Science denomina¬ 
tion as a whole have made special and 
earnest effort to keep their particular views 
entirely distinct from any form of thera¬ 
peutics which admits the reality of evil in 
the form of sickness or disease. See Eddy, 
Mary Baker; Science and Health. 

It (Christian Science) is the only world re¬ 
ligion, so far as we can now remember, that had 
its rise in an English-speaking country, and is 
the only new one that has been created for 
centuries. Wonderful spiritual forces must have 
been set at work to accomplish this marvelous 
result. Somewhere in it must be germs of 
truth. Otherwise its story would be utterly in¬ 
explicable. No other recent cause has had such 
tremendous territorial extent, either in this 
country or in the world. All these things must 
be conceded by those to whom Christian Sci¬ 
ence is utterly enigmatical or anathema. These 
cannot understand the theory of its application, 
but they must admit the beneficent results that 
often come from this treatment and they recog¬ 
nize the satisfaction which Mrs. Eddy had a 
right to feel over the triumph of her cause. 
Few founders of a religion have been so re¬ 
warded in beholding the tangible success of 
their labors. Most of these founders died in 
ignominy and defeat .—Boston Transcript . 


CHRISTIANIA—CHRISTMAS 


Christiania, the capital and metropolis 
of Norway. It is situated at the head of 
a fiord or inlet of the same name, about 
sixty miles from the open sea. The site 
is picturesque, being an amphitheater sur¬ 
rounded at a distance by high hills. The 
present city was founded in 1624 by Chris¬ 
tian IV, whose name it bears. The port 
is defended by the fine old castle of Akers- 
hus, dating from 1300. The royal palace, 
the cathedral, the university founded in 
1811, with its library and museums, are 
among the prominent buildings of the city. 
The city is screened from the north winds 
and enjoys a much milder climate than St. 
Petersburg. There are extensive breweries 
and manufactories of woolen cloth, soap, 
glass, tobacco, paper, and iron ware. The 
principal exports are lumber and iron. 
The harbor is closed by ice for about two 
months in the dead of winter. The popu¬ 
lation of the city proper is given at 241,- 
834. With its suburbs and port, the city 
has not far from one-third of a million 
inhabitants. See Norway. 

Christianity, the religion of Jesus 
Christ. It may be said to have been found¬ 
ed at his death by the dispersal and preach¬ 
ing of his disciples. Although the doc¬ 
trines of Christianity are derived from the 
Hebrews, the Hebrews refuse to be reck¬ 
oned as Christians. Christianity took root 
in Asia Minor, Greece, Rome, and northern 
Africa. As contrasted with Mohammed¬ 
anism, Buddhism, and other great reli¬ 
gions, it is now the prevailing religious 
faith of all Europe, Turkey excepted, Ar¬ 
menia, the Coptic people including Abys¬ 
sinia, Australia and the surrounding 
islands, and both Americas. The Rus¬ 
sians have carried Christianity into north¬ 
ern Asia; the English have carried it to 
India; missionaries have carried it every¬ 
where. There are said to be at least 1,000,- 
000 Christians in the Chinese Empire. The 
African colonies of the various European 
powers are, in large part, Christian. 

The present branches of Christianity are 


as follows: 

Churches. Total Followers. 

Catholic Church . 230,866,533 

Protestant Churches . 143,237,625 

Orthodox Greek Church . 98,016,000 

Church of Abyssinia . 3,000,000 


Coptic Church . 120,000 

Armenian Church . 1,690,000 

Nestorians . 80,000 

Jacobites . 70,000 


Total . 477,080,158 


Dr. Zeller, director of the German Sta¬ 
tistical Bureau, writing in 1910, claimed 
537,940,000 persons for Christianity; about 
one-third of the world’s total population. 

Christianity may be regarded as a reli¬ 
gion and as a civilization. In the latter 
respect it differs very considerably from 
the precepts of Christ. Christ enjoined 
peace. Christians are noted for conquest 
and fighting. Regarded as a civilization, 
rather than as a religion, it may be said to 
have followed the flags of the nations of 
Europe ever since the day of Charlemagne. 

The following shows the membership 
of the leading denominations in the Unit¬ 
ed States in a recent enumeration: 


Roman Catholic .12,094,656 

Methodist Episcopal . 3,112,448 

Regular Baptist (South) .. 2,054,301 

Regular Baptist (colored) . 1,864,877 

Methodist Episcopal (South) . 1,749,899 

Regular Baptist (North) . 1,187,356 

Disciples of Christ ... 1,274,725 

Presbyterians. 2,083,617 

Protestant Episcopal . 884,553 

African Methodist Episcopal . 858,323 

Congregationalist . 721,553 

Lutheran Synodical Conf. 672,049 

African M. E. Zion . 583,106 

Lutheran General Council . 447,118 

Latter Day Saints . 350,000 

Reformed (German) . 289,328 

Lutheran General Synod . 280,978 

United Brethren . 279,846 

Presbyterian (South) . 269,733 

German Evangelical Synod . 238,805 

Colored Methodist Episcopal . 224,700 

Methodist Protestant . 190,708 

United Norwegian Lutheran . 156,936 

Spiritualists . 150,000 

Greek Orthodox (Catholic) . 130,000 

United Presbyterian . 129,564 

Primitive Baptist .. 126,000 

Reformed (Dutch) . 117,139 

Lutheran Synod of Ohio . 110,877 

Evangelical Association . 105,733 

Lutheran Synod of Iowa . 100,500 

Dunkard Brethren (conserv.) . 100,000 


Christmas, the anniversary of the birth 
of Christ. It is observed on the twenty- 
fifth day of December—one week before 
the New Year. The celebration dates 
from the fourth and fifth centuries. Among 














































The Good Shepherd, Crypt of A martyr’s grave, Moses striking the rock, Crypt 

St. Agnes, Rome. Catacombs, Rome. of St. Agnes, Rome. 



Sarcophagus, with Noah’s Ark in relief, Treves* 
CHRISTIAN ANTIQUITIES. 











































































































































CHRISTMAS STORIES—CHRISTOPHER 


the Romans certain Christian practices 
were adopted from an older pagan feast 
in honor of the birth of the sun or Sol. 
Among people of Germanic ancestry, in¬ 
cluding the English, the celebration of the 
Christmas season, with holly, mistletoe, 
wassail, and the Yule log, are relics of an 
old pagan festival commemorating the 
shortest day of the year. The custom of 
making presents at Christmas time is as¬ 
sociated in the popular mind with the gifts 
presented to Christ by the Wise Men of the 
East; but in reality, at least so far as Eng¬ 
lish-speaking people are concerned, it is de¬ 
rived also from an old heathen usage. The 
custom of decorating Christmas trees has 
been traced from Rome to Germany, from 
Germany to England, and from England 
to the United States. The prejudice 
against Christmas observance, as too strong¬ 
ly tinctured with the heathen tradition, 
was so strong in Scotland that, until re¬ 
cently, children in Presbyterian families 
had no Christmas. Even yet it is not a 
popular holiday in Scotland. In New 
England at an early day, it was consider¬ 
ed inappropriate—irreverent—to celebrate 
Christ’s birthday with feasting, gift giv¬ 
ing, and jollity. See Nicholas, Saint; 
Holly; Mistletoe. 

I heard the bells on Christmas Day 

Their old familiar carols play, 

And wild and sweet 
The words repeat 

Of peace on earth, good-will to men. 

—Longfellow. 

Christmas Stories, a collection of tales 
by Charles Dickens. It was Dickens’ cus¬ 
tom to write each year some Christmas 
tale or a short magazine sketch that would 
lead families to live in happiness and har¬ 
mony. Collected in book form, the Christ¬ 
mas Stories comprise about fifteen short 
stories and five of somewhat greater length. 
Some stories are included which are not 
distinctively Christmas stories. The best 
known of these tales are A Christmas Car¬ 
ol, published in 1844, The Chimes, 1845, 
and The Cricket on the Hearth, 1846. 
These are the best Christmas stories ever 
written. Lord Jeffrey said that since 
Christmas, 1842, Dickens “had done more 
good, and not only fostered more kindly 

feelings, but prompted more positive acts 
n-ii 


of benevolence, than can be traced to all 
the pulpits and confessionals.” 

A Christmas Carol is the tale of a rich, 
miserly, hard-hearted old fellow, who, un¬ 
der the guidance of a ghost and three spir¬ 
its, is awakened from his selfishness to feel¬ 
ings of generosity and human kindliness. 
Thackeray says of it: 

Was there ever a better charity sermon 
preached in the world than Dickens’s Christmas 
Carol? I believe it occasioned immense hospitality 
throughout England; and was the means of 
lighting up hundreds of kind fires at Christmas¬ 
time ; caused a wonderful outpouring of Christ¬ 
mas good feeling; of Christmas punch-brewing; 
an awful slaughter of Christmas turkeys, and 
roasting and basting of Christmas beef. 

The Cricket on the Hearth is a picture 
of domestic happiness and contentment. 
The progress of the story gives glimpses 
of possible misery—such misery as selfish¬ 
ness and disloyalty may bring—but all 
ends happily. Everybody develops the 
“capacity of being jovial” and of hearing 
the cricket’s chirp, the fairy voices and 
“everything that speaks the language of 
hearth and home.” 

The Chimes is a “Goblin Story of Some 
Bell That Rang an Old Year Out and a 
New Year In.” It shows us something 
of the deprivations and sorrows of the 
poor, but more of the blessing and happi¬ 
ness that may be theirs; something of the 
harm done by “fears and jealousies, and 
doubts and vanities, more of the good ac¬ 
complished by the honest affection of those 
“who trust and hope, and neither doubt 
themselves nor doubt the good in one an¬ 
other.” 

In came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial 
smile. 

Christopher North. See Wilson, 
John. 

Christopher, Saint, a saint of the Ro¬ 
man Catholic and Greek churches. He 
was supposed to have suffered voluntary 
martyrdom in the third century. The sto¬ 
ry runs that he was put to the torture 
by the prefect Dagnus, that nothing could 
be found to harm him, but one of the poi¬ 
soned arrows shot at him rebounded and 
injured the eye of Dagnus. In pity Chris¬ 
topher laid his own head upon the block 
knowing that his blood would heal the 


CHROMIUM—CHRONOLOGY 


wound of his tormentor. Dagnus’ eye 
was restored and he was converted to Chris¬ 
tianity. According to the old legend, 
Christopher’s name had been Adokimos, 
which means the Unrighteous. He was a 
native of Syria, and a man of gigantic stat¬ 
ure, measuring twelve feet in height, well 
proportioned and strong. Proud of his 
size and strength, he determined to devote 
his power to the service of the greatest of 
rulers. He therefore found, as he believed, 
the most powerful prince on earth and 
served him faithfully. But one day, while 
journeying through a lonely country, they 
came to a place where two roads met. The 
prince made the sign of the cross. “Why 
do you do that?” asked Adokimos, who 
was a heathen. “For protection against the 
power of Satan,” answered the monarch. 
“Then, if you fear Satan, he is more pow¬ 
erful than you, and henceforth I will serve 
Satan.” So the giant served Satan. Once, 
however, in a wood he saw Satan tremble 
before an image of Christ, and immediate¬ 
ly he forsook his master and sought for 
Christ that he might serve the most pow¬ 
erful only. For long he searched in vain, 
but at last a pious hermit taught him of 
Christ and baptized him. But Adokimos 
.said, “I cannot spend my life in prayers 
and fasting; I should then lose my strength 
and that is all I have.” So the wise her¬ 
mit stationed the giant in a little hut beside 
a stream which holy pilgrims often wished 
to cross, and bade him bear over such 
travelers on his mighty shoulders. For 
many years Adokimos lived beside the riv¬ 
er and patiently and faithfully performed 
his task. .One dark night a little child 
called for his services. Adokimos set the 
boy on his shoulders and plunged into the 
stream, but as he advanced the burden 
grew heavier and heavier until he could 
scarcely stand even with the support of 
his strong staff. He was tempted to throw 
oft' the burden, but struggled on, and at 
last, exhausted, set the child down on the 
further bank. Then Adokimos looked at 
the little one and saw to his astonishment 
that a glory shone about its head. “Thou 
shalt no more be called the Unrighteous,” 
said the child, “but thou shalt be called 
Christopher, because thou hast borne the 


Christ. In bearing me, thou hast carried 
the sins of the whole world.” Then he 
thrust the giant’s staff into the ground and 
disappeared. In the morning the staff 
had taken root and bore leaves and buds 
and blossoms, that all men might know that 
Christopher spoke the truth when he said 
he had borne the Christ. 

Chromium, kro'mi-um, a hard metal 
known chiefly to chemists. The name is 
derived from chrome, meaning color, and 
was given to this substance because it pro¬ 
duces many-colored compounds. It has 
a bright, metallic luster, and is capable of 
a high polish, but it is difficult to melt. 
In nature it occurs in combination with 
iron ore. Naturally its production may be 
expected chiefly in iron regions. It is 
found abundantly in several states of the 
Union, but at present California is the 
American source of supply. It is produced 
in the Ural Mountains, in Greece, and in 
Austria, but the world’s supply comes chief¬ 
ly from a mine near Brusa in Asia 
Minor. By itself the element chromium 
is of no particular importance, but its 
compounds are valuable. A small amount 
added to steel produces so-called chrome 
steel, noted for its hardness. It is used in 
the manufacture of burglar-proof safes 
and edged tools. Chrome yellow and 
chrome green are used in staining glass, 
glazing porcelains, and as mineral dyes. 
In combination with potash, chromium is 
used in calico printing. The beautiful 
green of the precious emerald stone is 
thought to be due to a trace of chromium. 
Chronicles. See Bible. 

Chronology, the science of dates. The 
Chinese reckon their dates from the ac¬ 
cession of the reigning emperor. The 
Greeks reckoned from the alleged begin¬ 
ning of the Olympic games, which, accord¬ 
ing to their traditions, was about the year 
776 B. C. The Romans reckoned from 
the traditional founding of their city (753 
B. C. by our reckoning). After the estab¬ 
lishment of the empire, they dated by the 
reigns of the emperors. This remained 
the fashion of the Christian world until 
nearly the year 800 of our present reckon¬ 
ing. At that time the popes of Rome had 
been waging a century of struggle against 


CHRYSALIS—CHRYSOSTOM 


the emperors at Constantinople for virtual 
independence, and Pope Hadrian signal¬ 
ized the papal victory by ceasing to date 
events by years of the reigning emperor. 
Instead, he called a certain day “Decem¬ 
ber 1, of the year 781, under the reign 
of the Lord Jesus Christ, our God, and Re¬ 
deemer.” The Christian world, except for 
the Greek Church, has dated time ever 
since from the birth of Christ, as figured 
by Hadrian, shortening the expression to 
“year of our Lord” (in Latin, Anno Dom¬ 
ini, or A. D.). It is worth noting that 
Hadrian erred four years in his computa¬ 
tion. He should have made his year 785. 
Because of this error we are obliged to say 
that Christ was born in 4 B. C. The 
Greek Church reckons from the creation 
of the world, which makes its dates 5,508 
years greater than ours. 

In nearly all systems the year is the 
unit. Among the Greeks, however, the 
period was one of four years, or an olym¬ 
piad, the interval from one Olympic game 
to another. The end of the tenth olympiad 
was ten times four years later than 776 
B. C. To find the second year of the 
eleventh olympiad in our reckoning, we 
should add two years to four times ten 
years, and subtract the result, or forty- 
two years, from 776 B. C. The Moham¬ 
medans reckon from the Hegira, or flight 
of Mohammed, which occurred in the year 
of 622 A. D. To change a Mohammedan 
date, therefore, into our reckoning, it is 
necessary to add 622 years. Without doubt 
a time will come when all commercial 
people will use the same system of chro¬ 
nology,—possibly that now in use among 
English-speaking people. 

See Calendar; Year; Day; Month. 

Chrysalis, kris'a-lis. See Butterfly. 

Chrysanthemum, kris-an'the-mum, a 
flowering herb belonging to the aster fam¬ 
ily. The name is Greek, meaning golden 
flower, having reference to the yellow 
straps of the corolla. The original type 
had but a single row of strap-shaped flow¬ 
ers. The double varieties have been ob¬ 
tained by causing the small, five-pointed 
corollas of the disk flower to develop into 
straps. The florists of China and Japan 
excel in the cultivation of this flower. Our 


large flowered varieties are obtained from 
a blending of two species that grow wild 
in China and Japan. Although the origi¬ 
nal color was yellow, the florist now pro¬ 
duces white, pink, bronze, and crimson, 
as well as saffron-colored varieties. Bo- 
tanically the common ox-eye daisy, or white- 
weed, and the marguerite flower are chrys¬ 
anthemums. 

Chrysostom, kris'os-tom, St. John 
(347-407), the most famous of the Greek 
fathers and the author of voluminous 
works of a religious or ecclesiastical char¬ 
acter. The name, Chrysostom, means 
golden-mouthed, and was given him on ac¬ 
count of his eloquence. Chrysostom was 
born at Antioch of a noble family. He 
studied oratory under the sophist, Libanius, 
but was “stolen away to a life of piety” as 
his teacher expressed it. His mother’s in¬ 
fluence, it is believed, led him after six 
years spent in study and meditation in a 
desert, to enter the church. He was or¬ 
dained deacon and presbyter at Antioch 
and in 398 was appointed Archbishop of 
Constantinople. In both cities Chrysostom 
by his zeal and eloquence gained enemies 
as well as friends. For such sins as idle¬ 
ness, simony, and immorality in monks or 
bishops under him he had no sympathy, 
but promptly punished the offense by de¬ 
posing the offender or turning against him 
the power of his eloquence. He lessened 
the expenses of church and ecclesiastics, 
bestowing the money thus saved in charity 
and winning the name of “John the 
Almoner” thereby. Not even the court 
escaped his efforts at reform; with fiery 
eloquence he attacked its evils from the 
pulpit, neither magistrates, ministers, court 
ladies nor the empress herself escaping. He 
was tried for heresy, condemned and ban¬ 
ished to Nicaea. But the common people 
loved Chrysostom, and they besieged the 
palace with such irresistible fury that the 
emperor recalled him. The court did not 
mend its ways, however, and Chrysostom’s 
“golden mouth” continued to inveigh 
against it. He was banished again, to the 
Taurus Mountains this time. Even here 
the sympathy of his friends reached him 
and his letters continued his influence. At 
last the emperor ordered his removal to 


CHUCK-WILL’S-WIDOW—CIBBER 


the extreme corner of the eastern empire. 
He was made to take the journey on foot, 
bareheaded, beneath a burning sun. He 
was an old man, much spent with labor and 
an ascetic life, and before the shore of the 
Black Sea was reached, he died. Thirty 
years later his bones were brought back to 
Constantinople with great pomp and the 
emperor publicly prayed that heaven would 
pardon the guilt of his ancestors. The 
Greek church celebrates November 13 in 
honor of St. Chrysostom; the Roman 
church, January 27. 

Chuck-will’s-widow, a bird of the 
goat-sucker family, allied to the whip-poor- 
will, but larger. Its notes and habits are 
like those of the whip-poor-will. It feeds 
on the wing by catching insects. It has 
an enormous mouth. Chapman is author¬ 
ity for the occurrence of humming birds 
and sparrows in its stomach, which he 
kindly covers with the mantle of charity 
by suggesting that these small birds may 
have been mistaken for large moths. Two 
dull white eggs, with lilac markings, are 
laid on the ground or on leaves in thick¬ 
ets and groves. See Whip-poor-will. 

Chudder, or Chuddah. See Cash- 
mere Shawl. 

Church, a term applied to a body of 
religious believers; also to the buildings 
in which worship is held. The twelve 
largest church edifices in the world are as 
follows: Milan cathedral, with seating 

or standing capacity for 37,000; St. Pe¬ 
ter’s, 32,000; St. Paul’s, 25,600; San 
Petronio, Bologna, the Florence cathedral, 
and the Antwerp cathedral, about 24,000 
apiece; St. Sophia, Constantinople, 23,- 
000; St. John Lateran, Rome, 22,900; No¬ 
tre Dame, Paris, 21,000; Pisa cathedral, 
13,000; the cathedral of the City of Mex¬ 
ico, the cathedral of Notre Dame in Mon¬ 
treal, and St. Stephen, Vienna, 12,400. 
With the exception of St. Paul’s, which be¬ 
longs to the Church of England, and St. 
Sophia, which belongs to the Greek Church, 
these edifices are all Roman Catholic 
churches. See Cathedral; Basilica; 
Temple. 

Churchill, Randolph Henry Spencer, 
Lord (1849-1895), an English statesman, 
son of the sixth Duke of Marlborough. 


He was educated at Eton and Oxford. In 
1874 he married an American girl, Miss 
Jennie Jerome of New York, and the same 
year entered Parliament. Eventually he 
became a leader of the Conservative Party, 
and thenceforth was prominent in British 
politics. After a year as secretary of In¬ 
dian affairs, he became chancellor of the 
exchequer in 1886 and leader of the Con¬ 
servatives in the House of Commons. Ow¬ 
ing to differences with his colleagues, he 
resigned in a short time, but re-entered 
Parliament in 1892, where he served the 
remaining three years of his life. 

Churchill, Winston (1871-), a popu¬ 
lar American novelist. He was born in St. 
Louis, Missouri. He was graduated from 
the United States Naval Academy in 1894, 
and became an editor of the Army and 
Navy Journal. Later he held the position 
of managing editor of the Cosmopolitan. 
His best known works are the historical 
novels, Richard Carvel, The Crisis, The 
Celebrity, The Crossing, Mr. Crewe’s Ca¬ 
reer, and Coniston. In his later writings 
Mr. Churchill has shown a grasp of the 
way in which legislatures and courts may 
be, and too often are, manipulated in fa¬ 
vor of special interests. 

Churn. See Butter. 

Cibber, sib'er, Colley (1671-1757), an 
English actor, dramatist, and poet. He 
was born in London. When eleven years 
old he was sent to the free school at 
Grantham where he made a record, not 
alone in his studies, but by writing an ora¬ 
tion on the death of Charles II, and an ode 
on the accession of James II. Later he 
showed a passion for the theater and begin¬ 
ning by performing gratuitiously gradually 
established a reputation as an actor. In 
1710 he became manager of the Drury 
Lane Theater continuing to act until 1733. 
He began to write early in his career as an 
actor, his first comedy, Love’s Last Shift, 
appearing in 1696. This was followed by 
twenty-nine other comedies which enjoyed 
considerable popularity and for which it 
is claimed that they helped reform the 
stage since always the immoral characters 
return to the paths of virtue in the closing 
scene. Novelty, a young fop, is a character 
of many of these plays in the presentation 


CICADA—CICERO 


of which Cibber won distinction. In 1730 
the dramatist was made poet laureate, but 
his poems were of no value and won him 
only ridicule. In 1740 he published an 
amusing autobiography, entitled Apology, 
of special value for the vivid picture it 
gives of the stage in the age of Queen 
Anne. 

Cicada, si-ka'da, a large insect dis¬ 
tinguished by a locust-like trill or chirp. 
It is allied to the bugs. The periodical 
cicada, or seventeen-year “locust,” as it is 
improperly called, has a remarkable life 
history. Some summers the trees are full 
of cheeping cicadas. The noise is made by 
the male who takes no food and soon dies. 
It proceeds from two membranes stretched 
over cavities like a drum, and set in vi¬ 
bration by muscles. The females live a 
few weeks and lay their eggs in slits in 
the twigs of trees. In the fall the young 
nymphs drop to the ground and burrow 
in the earth. They attach themselves to 
the roots of trees where they suck the 
juices and burrow for years. The seven¬ 
teenth summer they emerge from the 
ground again and fill the trees with chirp¬ 
ings, lay their eggs, and die. If there be 
but one brood in a locality, as is frequent¬ 
ly the case, cicadas will be in evidence only 
every seventeenth year. 

Inside of the limits indicated by southern 
Georgia, Kansas, and New England, over 
thirty broods have been located. One of 
these extends over a large area in south¬ 
ern New England. In some localities sev¬ 
eral broods are known to exist, dating from 
different years, thus appearing with seem¬ 
ing irregularity. South of the range of 
the seventeen-year cicada there are broods 
of a thirteen-year species. The large har¬ 
vest fly of black and green, with its sharp 
midday trill, is a two-year cicada. There 
are two broods of this species, so that each 
summer has its adult brood. 

Like the grasshopper and the cricket, 
to which it is not in any way related, the 
cicada has attracted the notice of the poet. 
The cicada of the Isles of Greece is thus 
addressed by the Greek Anacreon: 

TO THE CICADA. 

O thou, of all creation blest, 

Sweet insect! that delight’st to rest 


Upon the wild wood’s leafy tops, 

To drink the dew that morning drops, 

And chirp thy song with such a glee 
That happiest kings may envy thee ! 

Whatever decks the velvet field, 

Whate’er the circling seasons yield, 
Whatever buds, whatever blows, 

For thee it buds, for thee it grows. 

Nor art thou yet the peasant’s fear, 

To him thy friendly notes are dear, 

For thou art mild as matin dew, 

And still, when Summer’s flowery hue 
Begins to paint the bloomy plain. 

We hear thy sweet prophetic strain; 

, Thy sweet prophetic strain we hear, 

And bless the notes and thee revere. 

The Muses love thy shrilly tone; 

Apollo calls thee for his own ; 

’T was he who gave that voice to thee; 

’T is he that tunes thy minstrelsy. 

Unworn by age’s dim decline, 

The fadeless blooms of youth are thine. 
Melodious insect! child of earth ! 

In wisdom mirthful, wise in mirth. 

Exempt from every weak decay 
That withers vulgar frames away, 

With not a drop of blood to stain 
The current of thy purer vein ; 

So blest an age is passed by thee, 

Thou seem’st a little deity. 

— Transl . of Moore. 

Cicero, sis'e-ro, Marcus Tullius 

(106-43 B* C.), the foremost orator of 
Rome. He was born in Arpinum, sixty 
miles southwest of Rome, January 3, 106 
B. C. His father, a prosperous knight, re¬ 
moved to Rome to give his sons an educa¬ 
tion. Cicero studied grammar, rhetoric, 
elocution, and history under the best in¬ 
structors to be found in the city. Then, 
as now, the law was regarded as an av¬ 
enue to political life. Cicero attached 
himself to a prominent jurist named Scae- 
vola, said “to be the most eloquent of those 
skilled in law; the most skilled in law of 
the eloquent.” At the age of seventeen he 
served in the army. Every gentleman’s 
son was expected to acquire some knowl¬ 
edge of military science.’ Entering upon 
the practice of law, Cicero won a reputa¬ 
tion by his eloquent pleas in the courts. 
It was necessary to remain obscure or to 
take sides in politics. Cicero espoused at 
first the cause of the democracy, as 
opposed to the aristocratic party. Not sat¬ 
isfied with removing opponents from of¬ 
fice, party feeling ran so high that when¬ 
ever a new party came into power it 
considered itself unsafe until it had put a 


CICERO 


few thousand of the opposing party to 
death. 

During the triumphs of the aristocrats 
under Sulla, Cicero thought it wise to go 
abroad and improve his mind by study 
and travel. On the death of Sulla he 
deemed it safe to return to Rome. In the 
year 76 he was elected to the quaestorship, 
•and was assigned the governorship of Sici¬ 
ly. Little is known of his experience in 
this capacity, beyond the fact that he was 
considered honest and capable and was 
held in esteem by the inhabitants of this 
island. Service in this position entitled 
him to a life membership in the Senate. 

Cicero now set his eye on the consul¬ 
ship, a position corresponding in a rude 
way to that of our mayor, or possibly the 
president of a republic. To guard the in¬ 
terests of the people, two consuls were 
elected to serve conjointly. Cicero served 
first as aedile, a sort of police commission- 
' er, and then as a praetor, corresponding 
in a general way to a judge—both with a 
view to election as consul, to which honor 
he succeeded in the year 63 B. C. This 
made him the head of the general execu¬ 
tive and administrative business of the 
state. Wherever he went he was preceded 
by attendants carrying bundles of rods as 
symbols of his authority. During his con¬ 
sulship a bankrupt rival for the position, 
named Catiline, organized an infamous 
conspiracy to overthrow the government. 
Cicero by his watchfulness kept track of 
Catiline’s movements and caused him and 
several of his leaders to be arrested. 
Cicero obtained a vote of the senate author¬ 
izing him to secure the safety of the com¬ 
monwealth. This vote he interpreted by 
causing his prisoners to be put to death in 
a dungeon. This execution, though done 
under authority, was contrary to an act pro¬ 
viding that no citizen of Rome should be 
executed judicially without the right of 
appeal to the people in a public meeting. 

In 58 B. C. a political opponent worked 
upon the people to secure the passage 
of a bill depriving Cicero of the privilege 
of fire and water within a radius of 400 
miles from Rome. The mob pelted Cicero 
with mud as he passed along the streets. 
He withdrew to Thessalonica. His beau¬ 


tiful house on the Palatine Hill and a 
country place in the suburbs were confis¬ 
cated and plundered. In 57 B. C. he was 
brought back to Rome by Pompey, “borne 
on the shoulders of all Italy,” amid gen¬ 
eral rejoicing. 

In 53 B. C. he was placed on the board 
of augurs, a sacred college of fifteen mem¬ 
bers entrusted with the duty of seeking and 
interpreting the omens of the gods. They 
also held festivals, consecrated temples, 
and performed other religious rites. In 
Spectator, No. 505, we find the following 
comment, “Can anything be more surpris¬ 
ing than to consider Cicero, who made 
the greatest figure in the Senate of the 
Roman commonwealth, and at the same 
time outshines all the philosophers of an¬ 
tiquity, as busying himself in the college 
of augurs and observing with religious at¬ 
tention after what manner the chickens 
pecked the several grains of corn which 
were thrown to them?” In reality the 
augurs had considerable political power. 
If they feared, for instance, that an elec¬ 
tion might be adverse, they could, and not 
infrequently did, announce that the omens 
—the auspices of the gods—were not fa¬ 
vorable for an election on that day. Other 
minor positions were held by Cicero. He 
rejoiced in the death of Caesar at the 
hands of conspirators, thinking that the 
republic might be restored. 

The party of Mark Antony, however, 
gained the ascendency and condemned Cic¬ 
ero to death, 43 B. C. He might have saved 
his life by flying from Italy, but could 
not prevail upon himself to go farther 
than his country villa. Here hired as¬ 
sassins found him. His slaves tried to 
hurry him away to a place of concealment 
in a covered litter, but were overtaken. 
Cicero put his head out of the litter and 
met his fate. His head and his hands were 
cut off and taken to Rome where they were 
subjected to insult by Antony and nailed 
to the Rostra, the scene of many an ora¬ 
torical triumph. 

As a statesman Cicero was not practical. 
He tried to restore the days of the old re¬ 
public, no longer possible. He was ego¬ 
tistical, but patriotic; theoretical, but sin¬ 
cere; vain, but not selfish. A far more 


CID—CIGAR 


favorable impression of his daily life may 
be obtained from his letters than from the 
orations generally read in school. From 
these letters we may see that he was kind- 
hearted, generous, and affectionate. The 
sources of his wealth are not known, but 
he was famous for fine country villas, ar¬ 
tistic furniture, a well stored library, and 
beautiful pieces of painting and statuary. 
As an orator and master of Roman prose 
his name stands first. Some fifty-seven of 
his speeches, a score of fragments, and the 
titles of thirty others are still extant. They 
were written on long rolls of parchment, 
no doubt. None of the originals are 
known. Copies of the Catilinian orations 
are numerous. The very oldest, that in the 
famous library at Milan, was made a thou¬ 
sand years after Cicero’s death. 

Cid, sid, The Poem of the, the na¬ 
tional Spanish epic, and the most ancient 
epic in any of the Romance languages. 
This poem recounts the achievements of 
Rodrigo Diaz who lived 1020-1099. He 
won the name of Cid from the fact that 
in one battle five Moorish kings acknowl¬ 
edged him their lord and conqueror, or El 
Seid, an Arabic word meaning lord, of 
which Cid is the Spanish equivalent. The 
Spaniards gave Diaz also the title of El 
Cid Camppeador, or the Lord Champion, 
a fitting title for him who was the “daunt¬ 
less champion of the Christian religion 
and of the old Spanish monarchy against 
the Moors.” He spent his life in wars 
against his country’s oppressors and his 
country rewarded him by making him im¬ 
mortal in song and story. His memory 
is still sacred among his fellow country¬ 
men. The Poem of the Cid contains about 
3,000 lines. It dates, probably, from the 
year 1200. It presents most vividly the 
manners and the spirit of the eleventh cen¬ 
tury in Spain. It is natural, full of sym¬ 
pathy and charm. The author, authors, 
or compilers of the poem are unknown. 
The French Corneille has made the Cid 
the subject of one of his most successful 
dramas. See Epic; Corneille. 

Cider, a beverage made from the juice 
or sap of apples. Apples contain a large 
percentage of juice which may be pressed 
out by passing the apples through a cider 


mill. It is considered that red apples make 
better cider than green or yellow ones. A 
bushel of apples yields about a gallon of 
cider. Fresh cider contains yeast plants, 
resident perhaps on the skin of the apple, 
which attack the sugar of the juice at once, 
converting it into alcohol. For this process, 
known as fermentation, see article on 
Yeast. The longer cider stands, the more 
of its sugar is converted into alcohol and 
the sharper the cider becomes. Hard cider 
is simply cider in which considerable sug¬ 
ar has been changed into alcohol by the 
process of fermentation. If cider be bot¬ 
tled to keep yeast out, and be boiled to 
kill yeast within, it will keep fresh for a 
long time. The making of cider has been 
inherited from England and Normandy. 
In the production of cider New York, 
Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana lead. 
The United States presses from 1,500,000 
to 2,000,000 barrels a year, according to the 
apple crop. Wormy apples and fruit not 
salable are usually put through the cider 
mill after the hurry of marketing is over. 
A large share of American cider is con¬ 
verted into vinegar. Cider was formerly 
a more popular beverage than now. In 
Snowbound Whittier speaks twice of the 
cider mug: 

And, for the winter fireside meet, 

Between the andirons’ straddling feet, 

The mug of cider simmered slow, 

The apples sputtered in a row, 

And, close at hand, the basket stood 
With nuts from brown October’s wood. 

See Apple; Yeast. 

Cigar, a cylindrical roll of tobacco for 
smoking. It is made of tobacco leaf di¬ 
vested of stems and rolled tightly in a 
strong leaf or wrapper. One end is pointed 
for lighting, the other for insertion in the 
mouth. A similar roll of tobacco, not 
pointed at the ends, is called a cheroot. 
Broken tobacco rolled in a piece of corn 
husk or rice paper is called a cigarette or 
little cigar. The name cigar was given 
originally by the Spanish to a kind of 
tobacco grown in Cuba. The most expen¬ 
sive cigars are those produced in a favored 
district of this island. They sell at whole¬ 
sale at a dollar apiece. The leaf of the to¬ 
bacco raised in Sumatra is much used for 


CIMABUE—CINCHONA 


wrappers. Cigarettes and cheap cigars are 
made by machinery. The more expensive 
are rolled by hand. There were 14,539 cigar 
factories in the United States in 1900; in 
1905 there were 16,395. The total output 
for the year 1905 was approximately 7,- 
376,000,000 cigars and 3,500,000,000 
cigarettes. The manufacture of cigarettes 
is decreasing; that of cigars is increasing. 
An excellent authority claims that at the 
beginning of the present decade, 8,000,- 
000,000 cigars were produced annually 
in the United States. In addition to this 
we import 200,000,000 cigars from Cuba, 
Porto Rico, and the Philippines, bringing 
the total consumption of cigars and cigar¬ 
ettes up to 13,000,000,000—an average of 
160 for each man, woman, and child in the 
Union, with a corresponding increase in the 
number of consumers. According to these 
figures the American smoker pays out not 
less than $900,000,000 a year for cigars 
and cigarettes. This seems very large in 
comparison with $25,000,000 a year for 
books, and $80,000,000 a year for papers 
and magazines. In fact, the cost of books, 
newspapers, magazines, libraries, churches, 
schools, and colleges, in other words the 
total amount spent for mental improve¬ 
ment in this country, is but a fraction of 
the cost of cigars and cigarettes. See 
Tobacco. 

Cimabue, che-ma-boo'a, Giovanni 
(1240-1302), a noted artist of Florence, 
Italy, called sometimes the Father of Mod¬ 
ern Painting. In Cimabue’s time art in 
Italy had fallen into a state of decadence, 
everything \^as mechanical and convention¬ 
al. He aimed to restore classical ideals 
and was the first of his day to attempt 
to follow nature in his paintings. 

Cimabue’s first masters were Greeks, 
who had been asked to come to Florence to 
decorate the church of Santa Marie 
Novella. These masters are perhaps re¬ 
sponsible for the fact that Cimabue’s 
models are largely from the works of 
ancient Greece. His paintings are regard¬ 
ed as a connecting link between ancient 
and modern schools. He is credited with 
having founded the Florentine School of 
painting to which Michelangelo and Ra¬ 
phael belonged. 


Of Cimabue’s works little remains. Two 
madonnas are preserved in Florence, and 
other paintings may be seen in the church 
of St. Francis at Assisi. See Giotto. 

Cimon, si'mon, an Athenian general of 
the fifth century B. C. He was the son of 
Miltiades, the great general who won fame 
at Marathon. Cimon fought against the 
Persian forces at Salamis. With Aristides 
he was in charge of a fleet sent to deliver 
the Greek colonies in Asia Minor from the 
Persian yoke. From the expedition 
Aristides soon returned to Greece, leaving 
in sole charge Cimon who distinguished 
himself by various achievements, the great¬ 
est of which was his encounter with the 
Persians at the River Eurymedon. Cimon 
followed the Persian fleet up this river, de¬ 
stroyed or captured between two and three 
hundred ships, and defeated the army ut¬ 
terly in an engagement on land. The spoil 
which he took was taken by him to Athens 
and used for the embellishment of that 
city. But Cimon’s success aroused jealousy 
among other generals and various popular 
leaders began to fear his power. After 
other attempts to injure him had failed his 
banishment was secured by reason of the 
Lacedaemonians scornfully rejecting the 
aid sent them in accordance with Cimon’s 
advice. He was eventually recalled but 
died soon after while besieging Citium in 
Cyprus, 449 B. C. 

Cinchona, sin-ko'na, or Chinchona, a 

genus of evergreen trees. They grow chief¬ 
ly on the eastern slopes of the Andes from 
Colombia to Brazil, at an altitude of from 
5,000 to 8,000 feet. They are the sources of 
Peruvian or cinchona bark and of quinine. 
There are about forty species. About a doz¬ 
en are valuable commercially. The bark is 
removed by the natives, and is brought in 
for sale in bales. The derivation of the 
name is interesting. A countess of Chin¬ 
chona, so called from the town of that 
name near Madrid, Spain, was the vice¬ 
queen of Peru. In 1638 she was cured of 
a fever by the use of Peruvian bark. The 
countess advertised the curative qualities 
of the bark, and the botanist, Linnaeus, 
immortalized the countess by naming the 
genus chinchona. The first “h” is omitted 
usually. The cultivation has been encour- 


CINCINNATI—CINCINNATI, SOCIETY OF 


aged by the British and Dutch govern¬ 
ments. Extensive plantations exist on the 
mountain slopes of Jamaica, the Himala¬ 
yas, Java, and Ceylon. The bark is valu¬ 
able for the extract known as quinine. 
About 4,000,000 pounds of cinchona bark 
are imported by American druggists yearly. 
See Quinine. 

Cincinnati, a city of Ohio, the metrop¬ 
olis of the Ohio Valley. “The Queen 
City.” It is situated on the northern bank 
of the Ohio River, very near the geograph¬ 
ical center of the Ohio Valley. The site 
of the city is an amphitheater of hills from 
two to three miles in diameter. The cen¬ 
ter of the city is about sixty-five feet above 
low water. Terraces of approximately one 
hundred feet in height succeed each other 
to the level of the surrounding country 
which is from four to five hundred feet 
above the river. These terraces, interrupted 
by ravines in which the remnants of native 
forests still stand, afford one of the most 
beautiful residence sections in the world. 
Shaded dooryards command a magnificent 
prospect of river and valley and the Ken¬ 
tucky hills beyond. A public fountain, 
cast in bronze at Munich, cost $200,000. 
The city extends along the bank of the riv¬ 
er for a distance of about fourteen miles. 
At the business center the sloping bank is 
paved with cobblestones. Floating piers, 
or wharves, that adjust themselves to the 
varying stages of water, are anchored by 
huge cables. The most noticeable com¬ 
mercial features are the great warehouses 
of tobacco, and the scows of coal that lie 
at anchor. The city is also one of the 
greatest pigiron markets in the United 
States, if not in the world. Numerous 
lines of steamers ply up and down the riv¬ 
er carrying an immense amount of freight. 
Sixteen railroads enter the city, most of 
them through a long ravine that finds its 
way out through the amphitheater to the 
west. The river is spanned by five bridges, 
including the cantalever bridge of the Balti¬ 
more and Ohio Railway and a suspension 
bridge leading to the Kentucky suburbs 
of Covington and Newport. 

Named in order of commercial impor¬ 
tance, the leading manufactures are iron 
work, men’s clothes, meat packing, distilled 


liquors, boots and shoes, carriages and 
wagons, tobacco and cigars, and beer. A 
vast amount of capital is invested in minor 
industries, such as tanning, furniture mak¬ 
ing, roasting coffee, and grinding spices. 
Saddles, harness, pickles, preserves, 
watches, organs, soap, candles, electric 
lamps, flour, patent medicine, and a great 
number of other articles are made for the 
various trades. It is estimated that over 
$500,000,000 worth of goods are distri¬ 
buted from Cincinnati annually. 

Originally the city was a center of the 
mound builders. Some remains of the 
mounds may still be seen. An Indian trail 
leading southward from Detroit into Ken¬ 
tucky crossed the river at this point. The 
original town was surveyed in 1788. Cin¬ 
cinnati owes much to the enterprise and 
business sagacity of German citizens who 
are still a prominent element in the city. 
Cincinnati has one of the great music halls 
of the world. The population, as returned 
by the last census, was 365,591. It is safe 
to assert that, at the beginning of the new 
decade, the present population of the city, 
with its suburbs, is 400,000. 

Cincinnati has one of the most complete 
systems of public education in the country. 
Primary schools and grammar schools are 
succeeded by a system of high schools, fol¬ 
lowed in turn by the University of Cincin¬ 
nati, an institution maintained largely at 
public expense. Lane Seminary is a theo¬ 
logical school maintained by the Presby¬ 
terians. 

See Ohio 

Cincinnati, Society of the, an organi¬ 
zation of the officers of the American 
Revolution. The suggestion came from 
General Knox, while the army was yet 
encamped upon the Hudson. The organi¬ 
zation was perfected May 10, 1783. The 
members had left their home at the call 
of duty, so they named the society in hon¬ 
or of the Roman Cincinnatus, who left 
the plow to defend the land. All Continen¬ 
tal officers who had served with honor and 
resigned after three years’ service as officers, 
or who had been rendered supernumera¬ 
ry and honorably discharged, in one of the 
several reductions of the American army, 
or who had continued to the end of the 


CINCINNATI SOUTHERN RAILROAD—CINCINNATUS 


war, and all French officers who had served 
in the cooperating army under Count 
d’Estaing, or auxiliary army under Count 
de Rochambeau, and held or attained the 
rank of colonel for such services, or who 
had commanded a French fleet or ship of 
war on the American coast, were entitled to 
become original members, and upon doing 
so were required to contribute a month’s 
pay. Many of the signers of the Decla¬ 
ration of Independence were invited to 
become honorary members. 

These words were used: “To perpetu¬ 
ate, therefore, as well the remembrance of 
this vast event as the mutual friendships 
which have been formed under the pressure 
of common danger, and, in many instances, 
cemented by the blood of the parties, the 
officers of the American army do hereby, in 
the most solemn manner, associate, consti¬ 
tute, and combine themselves into one So¬ 
ciety of Friends, to endure as long as they 
shall endure, or any of their eldest male 
posterity, and in failure thereof the collat¬ 
eral branches who may be judged worthy 
of becoming its supporters and members.” 
A constitution was adopted. Washington 
was the first president-general. Meetings 
were to be held in the several states on 
Independence Day, and a general encamp¬ 
ment was to be held in May. A golden 
eagle fastened to a blue ribbon edged with 
white was chosen as a badge. The objects 
of the Society were to cement the Union 
and to provide for needy widows and chil¬ 
dren of members. 

An idea got abroad, however, that the 
organization was political and un-American. 
A “howl of popular indignation” went up. 
To appease popular resentment Washing¬ 
ton suggested the abandonment of the prin¬ 
ciple of heredity. The plan was recom¬ 
mended by the national society, but was 
not carried out. The society had in 1909 
a state society in each of the thirteen origi¬ 
nal states. A society in France, which was 
disbanded during the Reign of Terror, 
1793, has been reestablished. 

In 1908 there were 842 hereditary mem¬ 
bers. Jackson, Grant, Cleveland, and oth¬ 
er presidents have been honorary members. 
Monroe and Washington were original 
members. President Pierce was a heredi¬ 


tary member. Roosevelt, Dewey,. Ex- 
President Loubet of France, and other men 
of repute are on the roll of honorary mem¬ 
bership. The city of Cincinnati was named 
for the society. 

See Cincinnatus. 

Cincinnati Southern Railroad, a rail¬ 
way extending from Cincinnati, Ohio, to 
Chattanooga, Tennessee. It is the only 
steam railroad in America that is owned 
by a city. The history of the road is not 
without an element of sentiment that lifts 
it above commercialism. Cincinnati, the 
home of Mrs. Stowe when she wrote Uncle 
Tom’s Cabin, gave deep offense to the 
Southern trade by an anti-slavery attitude. 
The influence of the pro-slavery men was 
thrown in favor of Louisville, a commercial 
rival of the anti-slavery city. At the close 
of the Civil War the wholesalers of Cin¬ 
cinnati felt that an effort must be 
made to regain trade. After preliminary 
agitation the legislature of Ohio granted 
authority. The citizens approved by ref¬ 
erendum. Bonds were sold, not in a single 
issue, for $18,000,000. Congress gave per¬ 
mission to bridge the Ohio River; Tennes¬ 
see gave a right-of-way to Chattanooga, 
and, after long urging, Louisville citizens 
not assisting, Kentucky granted permission 
to cross the state. The management of the 
enterprise was placed in the hands of five 
trustees named by the superior court. There 
was tremendous opposition to the unheard- 
of course of a city building a railroad ly¬ 
ing in three sovereign states. Suits and 
injunctions, elections, and charges of dis¬ 
honesty kept the board on its mettle. The 
road was completed in 1880. The event 
was celebrated with bonfires, banquets, 
and ringing of bells. The road was leased. 
In 1891 an attempt was made to buy the 
road; but the citizens who had voted to 
build the road now voted to keep it, and 
the road was leased instead for sixty years 
at a rental of $1,116,000 per annum. 

Cincinnatus, the hero of a patriotic 
legend of Rome. Born about 519 B. C. 
He was an upholder of the patricians in 
their struggles with the plebians. He cul¬ 
tivated a field of four acres across the Tiber 
from Rome. In 458 a Roman army was 
hemmed in a defile of Mt. Algidus. The 


CINDERELLA—CINQUE PORTS 


senate named Cincinnatus dictator and sent 
deputies to inform “the sole hope of the 
Roman people.” Livy tells the story: 

This man cultivated a farm of four acres. 
“There, either leaning on a stake in a ditch which 
he was digging, or . . . ploughing, . . . being 
requested by the ambassadors to listen to the 
commands of the Senate,” he was saluted Dicta¬ 
tor of Rome. Going immediately thither, he led the 
citizens against their foes, and soon returned vic¬ 
torious. “The leaders of the enemy were led 
before his car; . . . his army followed, laden 
with spoil.” Having finished his task, he resigned 
his dictatorship on the sixteenth day of holding 
it, and returned to his farm. 

* 

Cinderella, the heroine of an old fairy 
tale, dearly loved of little folks. The sto¬ 
ry is doubtless of eastern origin, but is 
found in Germany as early as the sixteenth 
century, and in the French of Perrault 
soon after, whence it probably came into 
the English. As commonly told this story 
possesses many features delightful to the 
mind of a child, while lacking in those 
distressing elements found so frequently in 
old time tales. Cinderella—little cinder 
girl—is a poor little drudge. She has a 
hard-hearted stepmother and two proud, 
selfish sisters. But she has also a fairy 
godmother, with a wonderful wand! Her 
ragged gown is changed to a party dress. 
A fascinating pumpkin shell coach ap¬ 
pears, with mice for steeds, lizards for 
footmen, and a long-whiskered rat on the 
coachman’s box. Cinderella’s beauty and 
happiness at the ball are most gratifying. 
But the clock strikes twelve, and the gay 
gown changes to rags as she runs for her 
coach. Then comes the search for a foot 
that can wear the glass slipper, lost in her 
haste. None but Cinderella’s is small 
enough. She weds her prince. The sis¬ 
ters repent and are forgiven, and all “live 
happy till they die.” We are told that the 
slipper should have been of fur; that the 
first Englishman who translated the tale 
mistook the French word vair for verve, 
similar in form and sound. But to the 
English or American child, the slipper of 
glass only adds another charm to the tale 
of her who “lay among the ashes and wed¬ 
ded the king’s son.” 

Cinematograph. See Moving Pic¬ 
tures. 


Cinnabar, the ore of mercury. It is 
a red, compact, very heavy mineral, com¬ 
posed chiefly of mercury and sulphur. It 
is found in California, Mexico, Chile, 
Japan, Spain, and Hungary. Mercury is 
obtained from the ore by roasting it in 
a retort. The pigment vermilion, used by 
painters for a brilliant red, is an artificial 
cinnabar in the form of a bright red 
powder. See Mercury. 

Cinnamon, the inner bark of a small 
tropical tree, closely allied to sassafras, 
the camphor tree, and the laurel of the 
poets. Cinnamon is cultivated chiefly in 
Ceylon, though it has been introduced in 
the West Indies. The cinnamon of com¬ 
merce is the inner bark of the smooth 
growing branches of the tree. Shoots of 
about two years’ growth are cut. The 
outer bark is scraped away, and the inner 
bark is peeled off in sheets which are dried 
in the sun. The sheets naturally curl 
into quills, the smaller of which are run 
into the larger and tied into bundles of 
about ninety pounds each for shipment. 
Cinnamon bark has a pleasing, sweet, warm 
taste and a delicate fragrance. It is much 
used to flavor cookery. Being expensive, 
ground cinnamon is apt to be adulterated. 
Cinnamon is a well established tint of 
brown. The cinnamon bear, for instance, 
takes the name from its color. See Spice. 

Cinque (sink) Ports, in English poli¬ 
tics, a collective term for the Channel ports, 
and territory subordinate to them. The 
word is French meaning five. The Five 
Ports were Hastings, Romney, Hythe, 
Dover, and Sandwich. Winchelsea and 
Rye were added, making seven. These 
Channel towns formed a sort of frontier 
exposed to French invasion. Before the 
formation of a national navy these towns 
lay under obligation to furnish men and 
ships for coast defense. After the prac¬ 
tice of building ships at national expense 
became established in the reign of Henry 
VII, the Cinque Ports were under heavy 
naval obligations. They bore the brunt 
of the destruction of the Spanish Armada. 
In return for their obligations they held 
a charter granting special authority and 
special privileges. The oldest charter now 
on record is not ancient, but it refers to 


CIPANGO—CIRCASSIA 


a previous charter granted by William the 
Conqueror. The Cinque Ports and a num¬ 
ber of subordinate villages were placed 
under a warden. The ports had a parlia¬ 
ment and courts. They were empowered 
to deal with murderers and felons. They 
disposed of wrecks and property cast 
ashore by the sea. They levied tolls and 
ruled serfs; they were exempt from cer¬ 
tain royal taxes; their parliament had au¬ 
thority to levy taxes for local purposes, and 
in many other ways the territory of the 
Cinque Ports was recognized as an inde¬ 
pendent, we might say, jurisdiction. A 
warden is still appointed, who acts as gov¬ 
ernor of Dover Castle, but the olden time 
prerogatives of the Cinque Ports have 
nearly all passed into national hands. 

Cipango, si-pang'go, in Marco Polo’s 
Voyages a name given to a group of is¬ 
lands east of Asia, supposed to be Japan. 
Columbus and other navigators made dili¬ 
gent search for Cipango, which Marco 
Polo had pictured in glowing terms. 

Cipher, sl'fer, a method of sending 
written information in disguise. Spies 
sending intelligence of the movement of 
armies, orders sent to generals or naval 
commanders in foreign waters, and com¬ 
munications between governments and 
their foreign representatives are usually in 
cipher to prevent their being understood by 
unauthorized persons. In the Russo- 
Japanese War the Russian generals sent 
home their reports in cipher. They 
were translated in the war office, then 
laid before the czar. When the Rus¬ 
sian peasants were shoe down in the streets 
of St. Petersburg the Russian minister at 
Washington received a telegraphic account 
in cipher. If countries are at peace 
international courtesy requires the trans¬ 
mission of cipher dispatches without scru¬ 
tiny or delay. 

One of the simplest ciphers is the use 
of a dictionary. Thus: “9-3-685, 9-2-7024, 
9-1-2657,” referring to word, column, and 
page of the Century, would be deciphered to 
mean “bring your gun.” 

If it be desired to send the following 
message: “Owls meet by old oak at six,” 
it may be done in a number of ways. We 
may use the letters that precede the real 


letters, assuming that z precedes a, thus: 
“nvkr ldds ax nkc nzj zs 
r h w.” 

The letters that follow the real letters 
may be used thus: “p x m t n f f u c z 
pme pbl bu tj y.” 

The words may be spelled backward, 
but this cipher is too easily read: “slwo 
teem yb dlo kao ta xis.” 

It is said that time, skill, and patience, 
with plenty of messages at hand, enable 
an expert to unravel any system of cipher 
ever invented. In his Gold Bug, Edgar 
Allen Poe gives a most ingenious account 
of the unraveling of a cipher scroll left by 
an old pirate to indicate where his treasure 
lay buried. 

Modern cipher is known usually as a 
telegraphic code. The sender and receiver 
agree on a set of words and meaning. 
Each keeps a copy. Thus Hamstrung bolo 
may mean “Elevators are heavily loaded. 
Sell 600,000 bushels regardless of price,” 
Gopher flag may mean “The enemy are 
digging mines under our largest battery. 
We must surrender within a week.” In 
the first message, economy may be the 
motive for using a code, as telegrams cost 
by the word. In the second, secrecy is 
evidently desirable. When mere economy 
is desired, the sender uses usually what is 
known as the commercial code, a standard 
cipher dictionary, a copy of which is kept 
in all large commercial establishments and 
at telegraph offices. The United States 
government uses the Western Union code 
for ordinary messages. A private official 
code is used by the Department of State 
for diplomatic messages. Brokerage houses 
use special codes or a private code. 

Circassia, ser-kash'i-a, a region of Eu¬ 
rope lying on both slopes of the Caucasus 
Mountains. It is now a part of Russia. The 
region is one of valleys, gloomy de¬ 
files, table lands, and glaciers. The coun¬ 
try yields timber, oil, precious ores, and 
the products of the flock. The people, 
now almost replaced by inferior races, have 
been noted for graceful forms and great 
beauty. For generations the young folks 
seem to have been eager to leave their 
mountain home. The young men have 
sought employment abroad as soldiers, and 


CIRCASSIA—CIRCE 


the young women have been marketed to 
traders who sold them at a profit to the 
Turkish harems. There appears to have 
been little sentiment against the practice, 
even on the part of the women themselves, 
who were enabled in this wav to see some- 
thing of life in distant cities. 

In an article contributed to Everybody’s 
Magazine for October, 1909, E. Baden 
Powell, a fellow of the Royal Geograph¬ 
ical Society, writes entertainingly of the 
pains taken to perfect the complexions of 
the family beauties, the rivalry among the 
daughters to fetch a high price, and their 
expectation of luxurious life in the polyg¬ 
amous homes of the wealthy of Constan¬ 
tinople, Cairo, Smyrna, Fez, Bagdad, 
Teheran, or Mecca. The wife of the khe- 
dive of Egypt and the sultana of the de¬ 
posed sultan, Abdul Aziz, were Circas¬ 
sian slave girls. Indeed, these fair-skinned 
Circassian beauties, if we may credit Mr. 
Powell, exercise petticoat government in 
the capitals of all Mohammedan countries. 
The young women are purchased by trav¬ 
eling buyers, usually Armenians, who pay 
down a part of the purchase price and the 
remainder on delivery at some obscure port 
on the Black Sea. They are forwarded 
to be sold at auction, usually at Constanti¬ 
nople, Smyrna, Saloniki, or Trebizond. 

Mr. Powell’s observations were made at 
first hand while traveling in the moun¬ 
tain villages of Circassia. He says: 

I was repeatedly urged to buy a fine, buxom, 
upstanding creature for the equivalent of eighty 
dollars, while a ravishing beauty, who would have 
dislocated the necks of half the loungers on 
Fifth Avenue or Piccadilly, was offered me for 
double that sum. 

Lest any conscientious reader of this article 
feel impelled to go out to the Caucasus and lend 
his efforts to the suppression of this pernicious 
traffic, I will repeat a little incident which was 
told me one night in the Officers’ Club at Tiflis. 
Said one of my companions, a commander in the 
Russian navy, who was in Tiflis on a visit. “De¬ 
spite the utmost efforts of our government, the 
slave-traffic between the Caucasus and I urkish 
ports has increased, of late years, rather than 
declined. So, when I was given the command 
of a gunboat two or three years ago, and ordered 
to patrol that fever-haunted Mingrelian coast 
on the lookout for smugglers and slavers, I was 
as proud as some of these Circassians with a 
new bourka. In the gray of an early morning, 
after endless days of waiting, we caught sight 6f 
a suspicious-looking steamer slipping swiftly and 


silently out to sea from a port that I knew was 
almost unused except for the loading of wood, 
certainly not by anything as swift as this boat. 
It was a stern chase from the first, for the 
steamer I was pursuing boasted good engines, 
and it was not until a shell from one of our for¬ 
ward guns whined across her bows that she hove 
to and waited sullenly for our approach. My 
gig was lowered away and I was rowed across 
to the ship. I found, just as I had expected, that 
she was packed from stem to stern with Caucasian 
beauties en route for the slave-markets of Con¬ 
stantinople. I might as well admit that, as I 
went aboard her, I rather likened myself to a sort 
of modern Sir Galahad saving damsels in distress, 
but my knightly dreams were quickly dissipated. 
I gave orders that a prize crew be put aboard 
and that the slaver be taken to Batum, whence 
the girls would be returned to their homes. All 
this I tried to.explain to the throng of fright¬ 
ened, wide-eyed beauties who surrounded me, 
but no sooner were my intentions understood 
than they threw themselves at my feet, begging 
me with tears in their eyes not to send them back 
to the squalor of their mountain homes but to 
forward them at once to their Turkish destina¬ 
tion. 

See Caucasian Race. 

Circe, ser'se, in Greek mythology, an 
enchantress who lived in the island Aeaea. 
She was the daughter of Helios, the sun- 
god. In his wanderings after the Trojan 
war Ulysses landed at the Aeaean Isle. 
Observing no sign of habitation, except a 
palace surrounded with trees in the center 
of the island, he sent a part of his crew 
under the leadership of Eurylochus to in¬ 
vestigate. On approaching the palace the 
men saw lions, tigers, and wolves that 
seemed very tame. Not realizing that 
these were men transformed by the magic 
of Circe, who inhabited the palace, they 
went on and at Circe’s invitation entered 
the palace. Eurylochus, however, was 
cautious and remained outside. Circe 
feasted her guests, then touched each with 
her wand, and the whole number became 
swine in “head, body, voice, and bristles.” 
Their intellects, however, were as before. 
The horrified Eurylochus returned to Ulys¬ 
ses and told what had occurred. Ulysses 
decided to release his companions. On 
his way to the palace he met Mercury who 
gave him a sprig of moly, a plant with 
power to resist sorcery. Ulysses entered 
the palace and was feasted as his friends 
had been; but when Circe touched him 
with her wand and commanded him to 


CIRCLE—CIRCULATION 


become a swine, his form did not change 
as she expected, but, instead, Ulysses 
drew his sword and rushed upon her. She 
fell upon her knees and begged for mercy. 
This was granted, but Ulysses bound the 
sorceress by a solemn oath to release his 
companions, to practice no more charms 
upon them, and to dismiss them from her 
island in safety. Circe kept her word and 
made her home so pleasant for her guests 
that they remained a full year. At 
their departure she gave them aid and ad¬ 
vice. 

Who knows not Circe 
Daughter of the Sun, whose charmed cup 
Whoever tasted lost his upright shape, 

And downward fell into a grovelling swine? 

—Milton. 

Circle, in geometry, a plane surface 
bounded by a single curved line, every 
point of which is equally distant from a 
a point within called the. center. Properly 
speaking the space, not the bounding line 
is the circle. The saying that one lost in 
a storm is likely to travel in a circle, 
meaning to follow a circumference, is an 
illustration of the difference between pop¬ 
ular and scientific language. Naturally 
enough the circle, one of the fundamental 
as well as one of the most graceful figures, 
attracted the attention of the earliest math¬ 
ematicians. From the Babylonians we 
have the division of the circumference into 
360 equal parts or degrees, and these into 
sixty minutes each, and the minutes into 
sixty seconds. Euclid, the Greek mathe¬ 
matician who taught at Alexandria about 
277 B. C., enunciated and demonstrated 
the theorems of the circle in a manner 
little improved upon in modern textbooks. 
The problem of squaring the circle, or of 
finding the dimension of a square which 
shall be absolutely equivalent to a given 
circle, has been a standing problem for 
centuries. It cannot be solved owing to 
the fact that the relation between the cir¬ 
cumference and the diameter cannot be 
found exactly. The well known ratio of 
3.1415926535-f- cannot be brought to an 
end. When one assumes to prove that 
certain angles are equal, because they are 
formed by a straight line intersecting par¬ 
allels, and then undertakes to prove that 


the lines are parallel, because the angles 
in question are equal, he is said to argue in 
a circle. 

Circuit Courts. See Courts of Law. 

Circulation, in physiology, the passage 
of blood from the heart into the arteries 
and from them into the veins and 
back through the veins into the heart. The 
human circulatory system consists of the 
heart, the arteries, the capillaries, the veins, 
and the lymphatic system. 

Complete circulation is of two parts: 
The blood passes from the left ventricle to 
the arteries of the body, then through the 
capillaries to the veins, and returns to the 
right auricle. This passage is called sys¬ 
temic or body circulation. Without stop¬ 
ping, the blood passes into the right ven¬ 
tricle and is forced through the pulmonary 
artery into the capillaries of the lungs, 
whence it returns through the pulmonary 
veins into the left auricle, and through it, 
into the left ventricle. The trip to the 
lungs and return is called the pulmonary 
circulation. 

The vessels that carry the blood away 
from the heart are called arteries. Those 
that carry the blood to the auricles of the 
heart are called veins. The arteries and 
veins correspond very generally in number, 
size, and location. In a general way an 
artery may be said to have a correspond¬ 
ing vein; but the walls of the arteries are 
thicker, stronger, and more elastic than 
those of the veins. The heart forces the 
blood out through the ventricles with con¬ 
siderable pressure. Near the heart, the 
pressure in the arteries is about a fifth 
greater than atmosphere pressure, ^ut di¬ 
minishes as the blood travels from the 
heart. 

The great artery of the systemic circu¬ 
lation is the aorta. It rises from the left 
ventricle in an arch and passes down back 
of the heart, through the body cavity in 
front of the backbone. More than thirty 
branches go out from the aorta to the 
trunk and the internal organs. At the 
lower end of the abdominal cavity the 
aorta divides into two main branches, one 
going to each leg. Three branches rising 
from the arch of the aorta carry blood to 
the arms, the neck, and the head. The 


CIRCULATION 


arteries that rise, one on each side of the 
windpipe, are called carotid arteries. The 
large vessel carrying blood from the right 
ventricle to the lungs is called the pul¬ 
monary artery. 

The vein which carries returning blood 
from the legs, the internal organs, and the 
trunk, is called the ascending, or inferior, 
vena cava. The blood from the head, 
neck, and arms returns through the de¬ 
scending, or superior, vena cava. The 
veins corresponding to the two carotid ar¬ 
teries are called jugular veins. The ar¬ 
teries branch again and again, until they 
are too small to be seen without the aid 
of a microscope. The veins branch like¬ 
wise. 

The blood passes from the ends of the 
arteries into the veins by small blood ves¬ 
sels known as capillaries, which are just 
large enough to allow the corpuscles of the 
blood to pass through. The name is derived 
from a Latin word meaning hair, but the 
capillaries are very much smaller than the 
finest hairs. They have the thinnest of 
walls, and are not to exceed a microscopic 
fraction of an inch in length. The veins 
and arteries are mere carriers. They are 
water-tight—we may say blood-tight—but 
the capillaries permit the escape of oxygen, 
white cells, and plasma. They also allow 
waste matter to pass from the tissues into 
the blood. 

The arteries of the systemic circulation 
carry arterial blood—blood red with oxy¬ 
gen and rich with nourishment. The 
veins of the systemic circulation carry back 
dark venous blood—blood laden with car¬ 
bon dioxide and the wastes of the tissues. 
The artery of the pulmonary system car¬ 
ries dark venous blood to the lungs. The 
four pulmonary veins bring bright ar¬ 
terial blood to the heart. The outgoing 
current of blood is driven by the muscu¬ 
lar action of the heart. The "walls of the 
arteries are smooth. The walls of the 
veins and lymphatic vessels, however, are 
furnished with valves which open toward 
the heart. The pulse of the blood in the 
arteries, breathing—every movement of the 
body that disturbs the blood or the lymph 
■—causes these liquids to pass on toward 
the heart. The valves prevent a return. • 


There are numerous ordinarily minute 
crevices and cavities within the tissues, 
known as lymph spaces. In many parts 
of the body lymph capillaries form a net¬ 
work. The lymph vessels combine to form 
large ducts which empty into the veins. 
The largest of these is the left thoracic 
duct. It is about as large as a penholder. 
It carries lymph from the legs, the left 
side of the body, the neck, the head, and 
the arms. These lymph ducts empty into 
the large veins of the neck. The lymph 
vessels thus form a second drainage sys¬ 
tem. 

The circulation of blood was not under¬ 
stood by the ancients. While it was known 
that the blood of arteries was connected 
with the heart, it was thought that the 
dark blood of the veins came from the 
liver, and that the two systems had no 
connection. Servetus, in 1553, discovered 
that blood passes from the heart to the 
body and back again; but the facts of 
circulation were not finally known until 
published by Harvey in 1628. The man¬ 
ner in which the blood manages to pass 
from the arteries to the veins was made 
known in 1661. The main features of the 
lymphatic system were made out at about 
the same time. As late as 1700 it was a 
grave question at Harvard College wheth¬ 
er arterial blood and venous blood were 
the same. 

The marvels of circulation are well told 
by Dr. Woods Hutchinson: 

In order to make this more clear, let us for a 
moment glance at the work of the heart. The 
heart is merely a hollow muscle, consisting of two 
pumps, one of which sends blood to the lungs, 
the other pumping blood through the tissues. 
Each side of the heart holds two ounces of blood; 
and as the heart contracts about 75 times a min¬ 
ute, this means that 150 ounces, or about lp6 
gallons of blood passes through each side of the 
heart every minute. That is, about 70 gallons ev¬ 
ery hour, 1,680 gallons every day, 603,000 gallons 
in a year, is pumped by each of the ventricles, 
making the total work of the heart for the year 
1,206,000 gallons. Think of the work done by 
the heart in ten years, in twenty, or in a life¬ 
time! And the heart weighs about half a pound! 

The stream of blood leaving the heart travels 
621 feet a minute, 7 miles an hour, 168 miles a 
day, 61,000 miles a year. No man probably has 
ever traveled so far as his own blood has. For 
the blood to make the entire double circuit from 
heart to lungs, then back to the heart, thence 


CIRCUS—CISTERN 


to the tissues, and finally back to the heart again, 
requires in the adult about 23 seconds. 


Tem- 


Carotid 


Jugular 

Carotid 

Carotid 


in 

KEY TO 

1 R. Superficial 

porai Vein. 

2 R. Superficial Tem¬ 

poral Artery. 

3 R. External Carotid 

Artery. 

4 R. Internal 

Artery. 

5 R. External Jugular 

Vein. 

6 L. External 

Vein. 

7 R. Common 

Artery. 

8 L. Common 

Artery. 

9 R. Subclavian Artery. 

10 L. Subclavian Artery. 

11 R. Subclavian Vein. 

12 L. Subclavian Vein. 
13-14 R. & L. Cephalic 

Vein. 

15-16 R. & L. Axillary 
Arteries. 

17-18 R. & L. Axillary 
Veins. 

19 R. Innominate Vein. 

20 L. Innominate Vein. 

21 R. Innominate Ar¬ 

tery. 

22 Descending Vena 

Cava. 

23 Ascending Aorta. 

24 Pulmonary Artery. 


THE COLOR PLATE 


25 R. Pulmonary 

tery. 

26 L. Pulmonary 

tery. 

27 R. Pulmonary 
2S L. Pulmonary 

29 Heart—R. 

30 Heart—R. 


Ar- 

Ar- 

Veins. 
Veins. 
Auricle. 
Ventricle. 


31 

32 

33 

34 

35 

36 

37 

38 

39 


44 

45 

46 

47 

48 


Heart—L. Auricle. 
Heart—L. Ventricle. 
Heart—Bicuspid 
Valve. 

Heart—Mitral Valve. 
Ascending Vena 
Cava. 

Descending Aorta. 
Hepatic Veins. 

Portal Vein. 

Hepatic' Artery. 

40-41 R. & L. Renal 
Veins. 

42-43 R. & L. Renal Ar¬ 
teries. 

R. Kidney. 

L. Kidney. 

Stomach. 

Mesenteric 
Mesenteric 
49-50 R. & L. 

Iliac Veins. 

51-52 R. & L. Common 
Iliac Arteries. 
53-54 R. & L. External 
Iliac Veins. 

55-56 R. & L. External 
Iliac Arteries. 
Small Intestine. 
Ascending Colon. 
Transverse 
Descending 
61-62 R. & L. 

Arteries. 

63-64 R. & L. 

Veins. 

65-66 R. & L. 

Arteries. 

67-68 R. & L. Ulnar 
A vtpri 

69-70 R. & L. Median 
Veins. 


Veins. 

Arteries. 

Common 


57 

58 

59 

60 


Colon. 

Colon. 

Brachial 

Basilic 

Radial 


See Heart; Blood; Lymph; Lungs; 
Oxygen ; Harvey. 

Circus, a Roman word meaning circle. 
The Roman circus was an inclosed race 
course about five times as long as it was 
wide. The long sides, and one end which 
was semicircular in shape, were fitted up 
with seats rising one above another, like 
the benches at a ball park, sometimes to 
the height of three stories. The more pre¬ 
tentious were built of marble at an ex¬ 


pense of millions. Pliny states that the 
Circus Maximus afforded seats for 260,- 
000 spectators. Seats for the emperor and 
nobility were constructed under an elab¬ 
orate canopy on one of the long sides. 
The starter’s box was directly opposite. 
When he dropped the signal, the chariots 
shot forth from stalls at the square end of 
the circus and coursed round and round 
the long ellipse till the race had been de¬ 
cided. A stone wall along the center 
terminated at each end in a stone pillar 
which had to be rounded with care. Under 


Julius Caesar, a canal of water was con¬ 


structed between the race course and the 
seats. Rowing matches and swimming 
contests were introduced by way of variety. 

The American circus is sheltered usually 
under a large tent. As a rule the track 
is circular, and is devoted to the per¬ 
formances of trick horses and to circus 
riders. The American traveling circus 
was established by P. T. Barnum of Con¬ 
necticut, whose “Biggest show on earth” 
is still carried on under the name of Bar¬ 
num and Bailey. It includes not only 
a circus with a thousand performing horses 
and a corresponding number of bareback 
riders, but a large number of tumblers, 
trapeze performers, rope walkers, a men¬ 
agerie of wild animals, and an army of 
1,200 workmen to erect tents and care for 
the property. The entire force consists of 
about 3,000 people. The big tent seats 
25,000 spectators. There are now in Ameri¬ 
ca several large circuses and a score of 
smaller ones with regular circuits. The 
Forepaugh-Sells is a noted combination. 
Sometimes a large circus breaks up into 
several to tour the smaller towns. “Circus 
Day” is the great event in an American 
boy’s memory. 

See Coliseum; Menagerie; Barnum. 

Cirrus. See Cloud. 

Cistern, a chamber for storing water. 
It may be a bin of concrete or masonry 
underground, and connected w r ith a roof 
by pipes; or it may be of wood or metal, 
like a huge hogshead, set up overground. 
In either case, it is designed to receive 
rain water and store it for future use. In 
the Gulf region, where the surface of the 
soil is but a few feet above surface water, 
and the ground is sodden with frequent 
rain, wooden cisterns for rain water are 
depended upon for a domestic supply. In 
a hard water country cisterns are con¬ 
structed sometimes to provide rain water 
for washing and other domestic purposes. 
The term is akin to cist or chest. A similar 
receptacle on a large scale, in connection 
with waterworks, is called usually a reser¬ 
voir. The elevated cistern used by rail¬ 
roads or towns is made of heavy plank 
hooped with iron bands. It is known usu¬ 
ally as a water tank and is filled from a 
well by a pump. 


Copyright 1912, H. M. Dixon 


CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD 


















CITIZEN—CIVET 


Citizen. See Naturalization. 

Citron, a form of watermelon. The 
citroruis nearly spherical. It has the strip- 
ings and appearance of a small water¬ 
melon, but it is nearly solid. The flesh 
is white, hard, and tasteless. Housewives 
prepare preserves from sliced citron. The 
flavor is much like that of preserved water¬ 
melon rind. 

Citron, a sub-tropical fruit closely re¬ 
lated to the lemon. In a broad sense, cit¬ 
ron includes the lemon, the lime, and the 
citron. The term citrus fruit is still 
. broader, including not only the fruits 
named, but the orange, the kumquat, and 
the grapefruit or pomelo, as well. The 
citron tree is cultivated in Greece, Italy, 
Sicily, Spain, and other countries for the 
fruit. The foliage differs from that of 
a lemon tree, and the* fruit, though re¬ 
sembling a lemon, is much larger, -with 
a thick, warty, furrowed skin. Of citrons 
produced in southern Europe, those from 
Sicily are perhaps the largest, some reach¬ 
ing a length of eight or nine inches and 
weighing several pounds. Goethe, the 
great German poet, celebrated his love of 
Italy and the bright color of the citron in 
his poem entitled Mignon : 

Knows’t thou the land where the citron blooms? 

The thick rind of the citron is used in 
making preserves. Candied citron is a de¬ 
licious confection. Citron culture has been 
introduced sparingly in California and 
Florida. The tree is more sensitive to frost 
than either the lemon or the orange. Flor¬ 
ida nurserymen propagate the citron by 
budding on the rough lemon and the sour 
orange. Cuttings of ripe wood are used 
also. 

City, a town of importance. Among 
the ancients the city was not clearly dis¬ 
tinguished from the state, or rather the 
city was the state. The cities of Athens, 
Rome, and Carthage were states. Other 
cities were either independent states or 
subject states. According to the ancients, 
there could be one and only one indepen¬ 
dent city in a state. The Roman com¬ 
mander in Britain was a citizen, not of 
the Roman Empire, but of Rome. 

A notion quite similar was held by the 
11-12 


cities of the Hanseatic League and still 
persists in the case of the free cities of 
Bremen and Hamburg. They are really 
small republics. Bremen has 89 square 
miles of territory; Hamburg has 158. In 
English usage, a “city” was originally a 
cathedral town,—the seat, or “cite,” of a 
bishop. The term was afterward extended 
in general use to any important town. 
Modern cities usually have special charters. 

In the United States, it is difficult to 
draw the line between cities and towns or 
villages. The laws of some states prescribe 
a minimum population limit for cities of 
10,000. In others, there is no limit. Un¬ 
der these circumstances a city may have, 
it may be, but a thousand, while a neigh¬ 
boring village may have several thousand 
people. A city is incorporated and is 
governed by a mayor and a council of al¬ 
dermen. Of the fourteen cities having 
a population of a million or more New 
York and Philadelphia are the nearest to¬ 
gether. They are only eighty-eight miles 
apart. 

The cities of the world having a popu¬ 
lation of over one million at the begin¬ 
ning of the twentieth century were: 


London (1910) . 7,537,196 

New York (1910). 4,766,883 

Berlin (1910) . 3,500,000 

Paris (1911) . 2,846,986 

Tokio (1908) .'.. 2,186,079 

Chicago (1910) . 2,185,283 

Vienna (1910) . 2,030,850 

St. Petersburg (1908) . 1,870,000 

Philadelphia (1910) . 1,549,008 

Moscow (1907) . 1,468,563 

Buenos Ayres (est. 1910). 1,247,000 

Osaka (1908) . 1,226,590 

Calcutta (1911) . 1,216,514 

Constantinople (est.) . 1,203,000 


City of Brotherly Love. See Phila¬ 
delphia. 

City of Churches. See Brooklyn. 

City of Elms. See New Haven. 

Civet, a small flesh-eating animal in¬ 
termediate between the cat and the hyena. 
There are several species peculiar to the 
Mediterranean region and Malaysia. The 
mongoose and the ichneumon are members 
of the civet family. Like its relatives the 
civet lives chiefly on mice and other small 
mammals, birds’ eggs, lizards, and snakes, 
and assists in destroying the eggs of the 
















CIVIL LAW—CIVIL WAR 


crocodile. The civet is noted for a pouch 
of oily fat with a peculiarly penetrating 
odor used as a perfume. Civets are raised 
for their oil, a few drops of which may be 
pressed out at intervals of a week or so. 
The Abyssinians bring civet to market in 
small cattle horns. Pure civet oil is worth 
$10 an ounce in London. See Perfumery. 

Civil Law. See Law. 

Civil Service, the great body of clerks, 
secretaries, and other employes required to 
attend to the business of a government. 
The civil service does not include the mili¬ 
tary service or the naval service. In con¬ 
nection with the postoffices, revenue offices, 
courts, and custom houses, and the de¬ 
partments at Washington, the United 
States government employs not less than 
100,000 persons in a civil capacity. Un¬ 
der the Constitution, all these are to be 
appointed directly by the president, except 
as he leaves the matter to the heads of de¬ 
partments. This is the theory of the Con¬ 
stitution. Practically, when of the same 
party as the president, the congressmen 
have claimed the privilege of making ap¬ 
pointments in their own districts, and the 
president has yielded so long that the cus¬ 
tom has acquired well nigh the force of 
law. When a district is represented by 
members of the opposite party it is custom¬ 
ary for the president to make appoint¬ 
ments at the suggestion of his party leader 
in that district. When a party goes out 
of power, its officeholders are likely to be 
dropped, and members of the successful 
party appointed to office. Prior to 1829, 
six presidents made but 112 removals from 
office, but rotation in office, as described, 
has been the prevailing method ever since 
the inauguration of Andrew Jackson. He 
stood for the principle that “to the victors 
belong the spoils.” It is called the spoils 
system. It is vicious. It gives a political 
party a large body of party workers to 
labor for party success rather than for 
good government. It has a tendency to 
fill the offices with those who are active for 
the party, regardless of personal fitness. 
It induces young men to join the dominant 
party for the sake of office. It leads to 
dishonesty and scandal. This has led to 
various efforts at “civil service reform.” 


Though described in the present tense, 
this vast political machine is partly of the 
past. In 1883 a bill was signed by Presi¬ 
dent Arthur authorizing the president to 
establish a classified service to which ap¬ 
pointments should be made for merit and 
during good behavior. Appointments and 
promotions were to be made on the basis 
of examinations and fitness, regardless of 
political or religious belief. This work of 
examining is placed in the hands of a Civil 
Service Commission of three members. 
Every effort is made to ascertain the ac¬ 
tual efficiency of the candidates for the 
various positions. Successive presidents 
have extended the system until it now 
covers 80,000 employes, or four-fifths of 
the entire civil service, and a pay roll of 
$75,000,000. The higher salaries are not 
as yet included. 

Now that the pressure for appointments 
has been taken from the congressmen, the 
tendency to pass acts creating more clerk¬ 
ships has been arrested. It is said that in 
the ten years succeeding the Civil Service 
Reform Act the number of clerks actually 
fell off a little, even in the face of in¬ 
creased work. The one argument urged by 
practical men against the reform is that 
appointees, - feeling that they are in for 
life, grow independent and even disoblig¬ 
ing. 

In spite of drawbacks civil service re¬ 
form, that is to say, the plan of holding 
office during efficiency and good behavior, 
is making reasonable headway. It has been 
taken up by several of the states and by 
a number of large cities. Of course the 
civil service of the states and cities con¬ 
tains a vastly larger body of workers than 
does the national service described above. 

Civil War, The, in American history, 
a conflict between the northern and the 
southern sections of the Union. So far 
as open hostilities are concerned, the war 
may be said to have begun with the bom¬ 
bardment of Fort Sumter April 12, 1861, 
and to have closed with the surrender of 
the Army of West Virginia at Appomattox 
Court House, April 9, 1865. The eleven 
states of the South forming the Confeder¬ 
acy had a total population of 8,900,000 of 
whom 3,500,000 were colored slaves. The 


CLAM 


Northern, Federal, or Union area had a 
population of 22,100,000. The Confeder¬ 
acy had about 1,400,000 white men be¬ 
tween eighteen and sixty years of age. The 
Union had 5,000,000 men of military age. 
The Confederacy enlisted and drafted 
1,230,000 different men. An equivalent of 
1,080,000 men were under arms for three 
years. The Union enlisted and drafted 
2,500,000 men, and maintained a total serv¬ 
ice equivalent to 1,560,000 men for three 
years. 

The war was confined almost entirely to 
the territory of the Confederacy. Slavery 
was abolished. The doctrine of state 
sovereignty was overthrown. The North 
increased in wealth and military strength 
from year to year. The Union troops laid 
plantations waste, ran off the stock, and 
devastated the most fertile valleys of the 
Confederacy. The South was reduced to 
dire poverty. 

On the Union side 360,000 soldiers died 
on the field of battle or of disease. The 
Confederacy lost 258,000. It would not be 
far out of the way to say that the war cost 
1,000,000 lives. The Union paid out $3,- 
660,000,000, and the Confederacy spent 
about $1,500,000,000, gold values. All in 
all the conflict, counting the destruction 
of private property, inflicted a loss of $10,- 
000,000,000, a sum equivalent to one-tenth 
of our present national wealth. 

Clam, a popular name for certain bi¬ 
valve mollusks. The word is akin to clamp, 
the two valves of the shell closing in a 
manner to suggest the jaws of a clamp 
or vise. The body is soft. The mouth 
parts are not developed. There is some 
popular confusion in the use of the term. 
Western people, in particular, apply the 
word to the mussel. Clams are found 
in salt water only. The most obvious differ¬ 
ence between a clam and a mussel may be 
noted in the mantle. This has a thin, 
fleshy fringe which skirts the edge of the 
valves and enables the owner, at closing up 
time, to make a water-tight, even air-tight, 
joint. In case of the mussel this mantle 
runs clear around the edge of each valve 
and forms a continuous flap. The mantle 
of the clam is rounded out at one end of 
the shell into a notch, or “sinus,” to permit 


the passage of a long “neck.” When the 
mussel draws in and claps its valves to¬ 
gether, nothing can be seen but shell; when 
the clam shuts up, a round hole at the 
point of the shell is filled only by the 
end of the soft neck. The oyster has no 
foot at all. The mussel has a large foot. 
The clam is between and has a small foot. 
It is not much of a traveler. The young 
stay in the folds of the mother until they 
are pretty well developed. After they are 
ejected, they swim about on the surface of 
the water for a short time. As soon as 
the shell begins to form the young clam 
sinks to the bottom and attaches itself to a 
seaweed, or to a pebble, by a tough, gelat¬ 
inous thread called a byssus. In case of the 
long-necked clam this thread disappears 
when the owner is about one-fifth of an 
inch long. This clam then burrows per¬ 
manently in the mud and sand. 

The clam of English coasts is called a 
piddock. It is collected for food and for 
bait. The young piddock settles on the 
surface of a clay bed, or soft rock, and 
scoops itself a hole by means of teeth on 
the shell. As the piddock grows, it con¬ 
tinues to scoop; even at maturity the tip 
of the shell barely peeps above the surface 
of the ledge or clay. The piddock spends 
its life in this hole. 

There are two well known clams on our 
Atlantic coast. One is found from Cape 
Cod to Texas. New Yorkers call it “a 
clam.” New Englanders, by way of dis¬ 
tinction, call it the “round clam” for the 
shape of the shell, the “hard clam,” for 
its thick, rough shell and the “little neck 
clam,” because the neck is smaller than that 
of the common New England species. The 
Indians call it the “quahog.” This clam 
makes shallow burrows, but it may be seen 
also traveling slowly like a mussel, shell 
half in the water and half buried in the 
floor of the sea. A similar species is val¬ 
ued for food on the coasts of France. It is 
a warm water clam. 

The second American clam is found from 
New York to Greenland. New Yorkers 
call it the “soft clam,” the “long clam,” 
and the “long-necked clam.” Yankees call 
it “the clam,” and think there is nothing 
like a clambake. The long-necked clam 


CLAN—CLARENDON 


lives on tidal flats. With age, it sinks for 
protection into a permanent burrow or 
pocket, perhaps ten inches deep. This 
clam begins its burrow when young, deep¬ 
ens it as need arises, and stays in for a 
lifetime. Were he turned out in his old 
age ho would have difficulty in making an¬ 
other. When the tide is in, a long “neck,” 
containing both ends of a U-shaped tube, 
is thrust up to the opening of the burrow, 
a current of sea water is driven down one 
leg of the siphon, through the gills, and up 
the other leg of the siphon out to the sea. 
The gills of the clam get what air is re¬ 
quired from this stream of water and, at 
the same time, strain out the minute ani¬ 
mals and plants required for food. As is 
the case with all the clams, the current is 
propelled in part by the gills. When the tide 
goes out and the flat becomes bare, the 
clam draws down his long “neck,” and 
closes his valves until the tide comes in 
again. 

The New York fishermen collect clams 
by hand at low tide, or collect them from 
the bottom of the sea with a rake. The 
New Englander goes out on the flats at 
low tide and digs clams. Large and small, 
there are many species of clams. Nearly 
every coast has its clam. The so-called 
giant clam may be mentioned. It is a 
native of the seas of the East Indies. The 
two valves of the shell may weigh 250 
pounds each. The natives of the Caroline 
Islands use fragments of the sharp-edged 
shell for axes. The body weighs some 
twenty pounds and is edible. Curiously 
enough, the scientific name of this clam, 
borrowed from the Greek, means three 
bites. 

The clams of the Pacific coast are not 
considered equal to the “long neck” and 
the “little neck.” Attempts have been 
made by the government to plant colonies 
of Atlantic clams on the Pacific coast. 

See Mussel. 

Clan, a tribe of related families having 
the same name. The word is Gaelic, signi¬ 
fying children, or descendants, and is ex¬ 
pressive of a belief that all the members 
have a common ancestor. The term was 
used by the large septs into which the Irish 
were divided, but more particularly by the 


numerous families in the Cheviots and in 
the Highlands of Scotland. It is equiva¬ 
lent to the Latin or Greek gens. 

As our account of the Scotch clans is 
derived largely from Lowland sources, it is 
not surprising that these clans are described 
as so many associations of thieving free¬ 
booters who raided the fertile portions of 
the country, carried off every article they 
could lay their hands on, and drove the 
cattle into their mountain pastures. Scott 
in his Lady of the Lake puts the case 
more fairly. Roderick Dhu speaks: 

These fertile fields, that softened vale, 
Were once the birthright of the Gael; 

The stranger came with iron hand, 

And from our fathers reft the land. 


Pent in this fortress of the North, 
Think’st thou we will not sally forth, 
To spoil the spoiler as we may, 

And from the robber rend the prey? 


Where live the mountain chiefs who hold, 
That plundering Lowland field and fold 
Is aught but retribution true? 

The clans of the Highlands were nu¬ 
merous, theoretically one for each High¬ 
land name beginning in Mac, as well as 
many others—Clan McPherson, Clan Mac- 
Dougall, Clan MacGregor, Clan Gordon, 
Clan Alpine, and the rest. 

See Celts; Bagpipe; Mac; Scotland. 

Clarendon (1608-1674), an English 
earl. Under his proper name of Edward 
Hyde he was a member of the famous 
Long Parliament in which he at first sup¬ 
ported the popular cause, but apparently 
becoming afraid of anarchy or of the ruin 
of the church, he became the leader of the 
royalists. On the outbreak of hostilities, he 
took the field for the Stuarts. When 
Cromwell’s dragoons proved too much for 
the Cavaliers, Clarendon fled to the Isle 
of Jersey. After Cromwell’s death, he 
arranged with General Monk for the re¬ 
turn of Charles II to the throne. He be¬ 
came prime minister and was made Earl of 
Clarendon. His daughter became the wife 
of the king’s brother, afterwards James II; 
Mary and Anne, afterwards queens of Eng¬ 
land, were granddaughters of Clarendon. 
Later Clarendon, himself an honest, hu¬ 
mane man, and a supporter of constitu¬ 
tional government, fell into difficulties with 




CLARENDON PRESS—CLARK, CHAMP 


the licentious, corrupt, and despotic court, 
and was driven into exile,—a shining il¬ 
lustration of the ingratitude of monarchs. 
He wrote a “History of the Rebellion from 
1641 down to the Restoration of Charles 
II.” It gives the Cavalier side of that pe¬ 
riod, and is still an authority. Clarendon, 
the name of the earldom, is derived from a 
village near Salisbury. It has been adopted 
by a number of American towns,—one in 
Arkansas, one in Vermont. An unsuccess¬ 
ful colony at Cape Fear River, North 
Carolina, was known by the name of Clar¬ 
endon. 

Clarendon Press, the printing office of 
Oxford University. As early as 1586 Ox¬ 
ford was authorized to publish, a favor 
not lightly bestowed when authorities were 
as much afraid of a printing press as 
they now are of contagion. The Earl of 
Clarendon gave Oxford the manuscript of 
his History of the Rebellion. The sales 
were sufficient to defray in part the cost of 
a new office building, called in his honor 
the Clarendon. The press became famous 
for the printing of Bibles and prayer books, 
as well as for miscellaneous publications. 
It is now in enlarged quarters and is still 
one of the great publishing concerns of 
England. It has a royal monopoly of the 
right to print the King James Bible, the 
common version, in Great Britain. Any 
office may print Bibles, but no other office 
may print an official Bible. See Oxford. 

Clarionet, klar'i-o-net', a musical instru¬ 
ment used in orchestras and military bands. 
It consists of a tube enlarged to bell-shape 
at one end. The sound is produced by vi¬ 
bration of a single thin reed laid against 
the mouth piece, one side of which is flat¬ 
tened for this purpose. The tone is varied 
by keys along the side of the tube and by 
a series of holes to be stopped with the 
fingers. 

A clarionet can be played in one key 
only. Different instruments are attuned, 
therefore, to different keys, those in the 
key of C and the key of F are the most 
popular. The clarionet was invented by 
Joseph Denner of Nuremberg in 1690 but 
has been much improved since that time. 

Clarissa Harlowe. See Richardson; 
Fiction. 


Clark, Alvan (1804-1887), a maker of 

astronomical instruments. With his son, 
Alvan G. Clark (1832-1897), he formed 
the firm of Clark and Son of Cambridge, 
Massachusetts, known the world over for 
telescopes of great delicacy and power. 
The more interesting of their telescopes 
may be mentioned. One, bearing an object 
glass with an aperture or diameter of 
eighteen and one-half inches, is owned by 
the astronomical society of Chicago. The 
Naval Observatory at Washington has a 
twenty-six inch Clark telescope. Cyrus 
McCormick, 'the maker of reapers, gave a 
large Clark to the University of Virginia. 
A thirty-inch instrument was made for the 
Imperial Observatory at St. Petersburg; a 
thirty-six inch for the Lick Observatory 
at Mount Plamilton, California, and lastly 
a forty-inch object glass was ordered by 
C. T. Yerkes for the University of Chicago 
Observatory at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. 
The Yerkes lens is the most powerful in 
existence. It brings the moon within an ap¬ 
parent distance of a few miles from the 
observer. It requires the purest of glass 
and the work of years to bring one of these 
lenses to perfection. The finish is so 
delicate and so perfect that a single care¬ 
less touch with the end of one’s finger 
would ruin the surface and render the 
glass useful only for a smaller lens. 

Clark, Champ (1850-), an American 
statesman whose real name is James Beau¬ 
champ Clark. He was born in Anderson 
County, Kentucky, and educated in the 
common schools, in Kentucky University, 
Bethany College, and the Cincinnati Law 
School. In 1873 and 1874 he acted as 
president of Marshall College, West Vir¬ 
ginia, then removed to Bowling Green, 
Missouri, where he has lived since 1880. 
He took up the practice of law, and was 
soon elected city attorney, then county at¬ 
torney, and afterward to the state legis¬ 
lature. In 1892 he was elected to Congress 
as a free-trade Democrat, and with the ex¬ 
ception of one term has since served con¬ 
tinuously, being chosen speaker of the 
House in 1911. He led on over thirty bal¬ 
lots for president in the Democratic Na¬ 
tional Convention of 1912. 



CLARK—CLAXTON 


Clark, George Rogers (1752-1818), 
an American soldier and pioneer. He was 
a native of Virginia. In 1775 he settled 
in Kentucky. At the outbreak of the Rev¬ 
olution he was a leader in the midst of the 
Indian warfare waged in the Ohio Valley. 
He defended Harrodsburg against the com¬ 
bined attack of British and Indians. In 
1778-9 he led a force of Kentucky riflemen 
across the Ohio to the capture of Kaskas- 
kia on the Mississippi. From this post 
he marched eastward to surprise the Brit¬ 
ish at Fort Vincennes on the Wabash. 
This cross country march of a small force, 
floundering through deep snow or wading 
waist deep in icy water to attack a superior 
foe intrenched in comfort, is one of the 
most notable, as well as successful, expe¬ 
ditions on record. At the conclusion of 
peace it gave the United States a title to 
the Mississippi Valley by virtue of con¬ 
quest and occupancy. In his latter days, 
as is too often the case, Clark’s services 
were forgotten. He became a drunkard, 
fell into want, and died near Louisville in 
utter neglect. Good portraits are given in 
Churchill’s The Crossing, Thompson’s 
Alice of Old Vincennes, and Roosevelt’s 
Winning of the West. 

Clark, William (1770-1838), an Amer¬ 
ican explorer. A brother of George Rogers 
Clark. He migrated from Virginia to the 
present site of Louisville, Kentucky. In 
1808, he was appointed to the joint com¬ 
mand of the Lewis and Clark expedition, 
sent by Jefferson to explore the upper wa¬ 
ters of the Missouri, and the great North¬ 
west. Clark’s journal of the trip from St. 
Louis through the mountains to the mouth 
of the Columbia River in Oregon is full 
of thrilling anecdotes. It is better reading 
than any story of Indian adventure. He 
died at St. Louis. See Lewis. 

Clark University, an institution of high¬ 
er learning at Worcester, Massachusetts. 
It was founded in 1887 by Jonas Gilman 
Clark for the purpose of offering to grad¬ 
uate students, educators, and specialists 
opportunity for study and original re¬ 
search. The original endowment was 
$1,000,000, a sum insufficient to equip 
courses in all subjects. Those offered were 
physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, and 


education. After Mr. Clark’s death in 1900 
it was found that by the terms of his will 
the University was further endowed with 
$2,500,000. Courses were then equipped 
in mathematics, economics, sociology, his¬ 
tory, and modern languages, and an under¬ 
graduate department was added. 

That the opportunities offered by this 
institution have been appreciated may be 
gathered from the fact that within ten 
years of the founding of the University its 
students and graduates had published no 
less than 500 works, presenting to a great¬ 
er or less extent the results of their re¬ 
searches. A great deal of the prestige to 
which this institution has attained is due to 
the noted educator at its head, G. Stanley 
Hall. 

In 1910 Clark University had a library 
of 50,000 volumes, there were 34 instruct¬ 
ors and 282 students. The American Jour¬ 
nal of Psychology, The Pedagogical Semi¬ 
nary, and The Mathematical Review, are 
periodicals published by the University. 

Clarke, James Freeman (1810-1888), 
an American Unitarian clergyman and mis¬ 
cellaneous author. He was born at Han¬ 
over, New Hampshire. He was educated 
at Harvard University, and his first pas¬ 
torate was at Louisville, Kentucky. In 
1841 he removed to Boston and founded 
the Church of the Disciples of which he 
was pastor until his death. Mr. Clarke 
was a friend of Channing, Holmes, and 
Emerson, and sympathised with the views 
of the Transcendentalists. He was a clear 
thinker—a leader in literary and education¬ 
al movements. His best known writings are 
Ten Great Religions, Every-Day Religion, 
Orthodoxy, Its Truths and Errors, Chris¬ 
tian Doctrine of Forgiveness, Essentials 
and Non-Essentials in Religion. 

Let us thank God for books. When I consider 
what some books have done for the world, and 
what they are doing; how they keep up our 
hope, awaken new courage and faith, soothe 
pain, give an ideal life to those whose homes 
are hard and cold, bind together distant ages 
and foreign lands, create new worlds of beauty, 
bring down truths from heaven,—I give eternal 
blessings for the gift, and pray that we may use 
it aright, and abuse it not.—J. Freeman Clarke. 

Claxton, Philander Priestley (1862-), 
an American educator. He was born in 


CLAY 


Tennessee. After completing a course of 
study at the university of his native state 
and filling the position of superintendent 
of schools at Kingston, North Carolina, for 
a year, he studied at Johns Hopkins Uni¬ 
versity and spent a year of study in Ger¬ 
many. He was superintendent of schools 
successively in the North Carolina cities of 
Wilson and Asheville, and in 1893 was 
made professor of pedagogy in the North 
Carolina State Normal and Industrial Col¬ 
lege. In 1902 he was made professor of 
education in the University of Tennessee, 
and four years later professor of secondary 
education and inspection of high schools in 
the same institution. Mr. Claxton is the 
author of many addresses and magazine 
articles on educational subjects, and has oc¬ 
cupied many positions of importance in 
various educational organizations. He 
edited at different periods the North Car¬ 
olina Journal of Education , and the At¬ 
lantic Educational Journal. He has served 
as a member of the Council of the National 
Educational Association of America, and 
as chairman of the executive committee of 
the National Story Tellers’ League. In 
1911, Mr. Claxton was appointed United 
States Commissioner of Education in the 
place of Elmer Elsworth Brown, resigned. 

Clay, a kind of earth originating chiefly 
from the decomposition of feldspar, and 
consisting largely of alumina, silica, and 
water, together with various impurities. 
Clay is traditionally yellow. The term 
“claybank” is applied to a horse of that col¬ 
or, but clays are often red from infusion of 
iron and, indeed, may be of almost any 
color. A pure clay is white. The war 
paints of the American Indian were merely 
clays of various colors. Fine clay, free 
from sand or grit, is the potter’s material 
out of which crockery is made, and ordi¬ 
nary clay is the earth used for tiles and 
brick. Pipe clay is a fine clay, free from 
iron and other impurities, suitable for 
fine pottery and tobacco pipes. The an¬ 
nual money value of clay products far ex¬ 
ceeds the output of gold mines. Wheat 
and all members of the pea family, par¬ 
ticularly the clovers, thrive in a clay soil. 
Some idea of the value of clay from an 
agricultural point of view may be had 


from the following statement. Estimating 
the yield of wheat at twenty bushels to 
the acre, the following table shows the 
number of crops of wheat for which the 
various elements entering into the composi¬ 
tion of clay are sufficient: 


Element. Crops. 

Potash . 226 

Magnesia . 4164 

Lime. 2260 

Phosphoric acid . 420 

Sulphuric acid . 216 

Nitrogen . 157 


See Brick; Pottery; Kaolin; Meer¬ 
schaum ; Adobe. 

Clay, Henry (April 12, 1777-June 29, 
1852), an American statesman. He was 
a native of Virginia. His parents lived in 
a swampy place, such as in Virginia is 
called a slash. He studied law and settled 
in Kentucky and was sent to the state legis¬ 
lature. He was in public office for over 
forty years. During campaigns he was 
called the “Mill Boy of the Slashes.” 

Twice he sat in the legislature of Ken¬ 
tucky. He represented his district three 
times in the United States House of Repre¬ 
sentatives, and each time he was made its 
speaker. He was elected to the United 
States Senate four times. In politics he 
was a Whig. Three times he was the 
candidate of that party for the presidency. 
He was defeated three times at the polls. 
The first time, by Adams, the second, by 
Jackson, and the third time, by Polk. Dur¬ 
ing the second of these campaigns Clay’s 
supporters carried ash poles in memory of 
Ashland. Jackson men carried hickory 
poles in honor of Old Hickory. The 
Jackson men sang: 

Alas ! poor Cooney Clay ! 

Alas ! poor Cooney Clay ! 

You never can be president, 

For so the people say. 

Under Madison, Clay was one of the 
envoys to negotiate the treaty of peace in 
1814; under Adams he was secretary of 
state. Whether on the floor of the House 
or the Senate, or whether he acted in 
some other capacity, he led his party for 
forty years. His admirers called him the 
Great Commoner—the appellation of Wil¬ 
liam Pitt. He was recognized as the peer 
of Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun. 








CLAYTON-BULWER TREATY—CLEARING HOUSE 


As to his position on public questions, 
he forced on the war of 1812; he stood 
for a protective tariff; he drew up the com¬ 
promise tariff bill to appease Calhoun and 
South Carolina; he carried the Missouri 
Compromise; he stood the staunch friend 
of the South American republics in their 
struggles with Spain; he freed his own 
slaves, and he drew up the famous compro¬ 
mise bill of 1850, known as the Omnibus 
Bill, because it provided for so many dif¬ 
ferent measures. The chief provisions 
were,—the admission of California to the 
Union, organization of the territories of 
New Mexico and Utah, abolition of the 
slave trade in the District of Columbia, 
and the fugitive slave law. He advocated 
the plan of purchasing all slave children 
and setting them free. The proposed meas¬ 
ure would have cost but a fraction of the 
$10,000,000,000 actually spent and de¬ 
stroyed by the Civil War. 

Toward the end of his career Clay be¬ 
came very much unsettled. He tried to 
compromise the difficulties between the 
North and South, but foresaw that the 
Union was drifting into peril. 

Of the three great names associated, 
Calhoun surpassed in intellect and in the 
integrity of his convictions; Webster ex¬ 
celled in the extent of his literary ac¬ 
quirements and in oratory; Clay possessed 
in the higher degree the elements of popu¬ 
lar leadership and personal influence. Ken¬ 
tucky erected a monument to his memory. 

Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, a treaty con¬ 
cluded between the United States and 
Great Britain in 1850. Its purpose was 
to facilitate the construction of a ship 
canal across Central America. The ne¬ 
gotiators, from whom the treaty takes its 
name, were J. Middleton Clayton, Secre¬ 
tary of State under President Taylor, for 
the United States, and Lord Henry Bul- 
wer for Great Britain. By the terms of 
the treaty, the two powers guaranteed the 
protection and neutrality of the canal, and 
agreed that neither power should ever “oc¬ 
cupy, or fortify, or colonize Nicaragua or 
any part of Central America.” It was 
understood that these stipulations did not 
apply to British Honduras. Many dis¬ 
putes arose due to conflicting interpreta¬ 


tions of the treaty and to dissatisfaction 
arising from changing conditions. In 1881 
the claim was made by the United States 
that the treaty had become obsolete, but 
Great Britain declared it to be still in 
force. The statement in President McKin¬ 
ley’s message of 1898, that the canal had 
become a national necessity led to the re¬ 
opening of negotiations, with the result 
that in 1901 a new treaty was ratified, 
John Hay, secretary of state, and Lord 
Pauncefote acting as negotiators. By the 
Hay-Pauncefote treaty the Clayton-Bulwer 
treaty was abrogated. The principle of 
neutrality was retained, but certain rights 
of control not very clearly defined were 
granted the United States. Great Britain 
renounced any right to join in the construc¬ 
tion and control of the canal but no prohi¬ 
bition was made concerning the erection of 
fortifications. 

Clearing House, a central office where 
representatives of different banks meet to 
exchange checks and drafts. At the close 
of a day’s business each bank in a city 
finds that it holds checks upon the other 
banks for various amounts. Where there 
are but a few banks, a clerk goes out the 
next morning and presents these checks, 
but in cities with many banks the 
clerks meet as stated at a given hour, 
usually 9 A. m. A few minutes are 
quite sufficient to do the work that would 
otherwise require travel and expenditure of 
valuable time. In large clearing houses 
a desk is provided for each bank holding 
membership, also a central desk for a man¬ 
ager. Each bank is represented by two 
clerks. One takes a seat at the desk, the 
other passes around the circle delivering 
the bundles of checks which he holds 
against the various banks. A deposit slip 
or statement is delivered with each bundle 
of checks, and a general statement is 
handed to the manager. If a bank re¬ 
ceives checks in excess of its total deposits, 
it pays the manager the balance in cash. 
If a bank deposits checks exceeding in 
value those received, it receives the balance 
in cash. If the accounts be correct, the 
manager receives precisely as much cash 
as he pays out. Fines are imposed for 
tardiness and inaccuracy. 


CLEARING HOUSE 


In the New York clearing house, con¬ 
sisting of sixty or more members, forty- 
five minutes are allowed for the settlement 
of business that would otherwise require 
the time of many messengers and the trans¬ 
portation of enormous quantities of money 
with attendant risks and expenses. 

The manager of the New York clear¬ 
ing house, writing in the Americana in 
1902, states that the daily clearings of the 
various cities of the United States, if made 
by messengers with coin, would require the 
transportation of 700 tons of the precious 
metals daily; while under the present sys¬ 
tem less than five per cent of the daily ex¬ 
changes are settled in money. The system 
originated, it is claimed, in Edinburgh 
near the close of the eighteenth century. 
The earliest authentic records date from 
1770 when the London bank clerks ar¬ 
ranged for a meeting in an informal way 
at a central room to exchange deposits and 
pay balances. It is everywhere customary 
for the smaller banks, and country banks 
not members of the clearing house associa¬ 
tion, to make their deposits with banking 
members. American clearings for 101 cit¬ 
ies in 1908 were $131,285,367,000. The 
Canadian clearings for the same year were 
$4,142,000,000. 

The following table, compiled by The 
American Banker, shows the volume of 
business done in the clearing houses of 
the principal cities of the United States 
for 1908. It shows New York to be the 
financial metropolis of the nation; Boston, 
of New England; Chicago, of the Middle 
West; and San Francisco, of the Pacific 
States. 


Boston . 

Fall River . 

Hartford . 

Lowell . 

Ne' 57 Bedford . . . 
New Haven 
Portland, Me 

Providence . 

Springfield, Mass. 
Worcester . 


$7,338,035,825 

50,797,024 

166,906,324 

24,180,450 

40,876,795 

123,102.818 

91,908,653 

337,480,000 

92,490,212 

76,189,380 


Total New England . $8,341,967,481 


Albany ... 
Baltimore . 
Binghamton 
Buffalo ... 


$278,976,213 

1,240,904,390 

23,836,900 

409,086,589 


Chester .. 

. 23,560,542 

Greensburg . 

. 25,919,663 

New York . 

. 79,275,880,256 

Philadelphia . 

. 5,987,754,106 

Pittsburg . 

. 2,064,632,959 

Rochester . 

. 175,959,356 

Syracuse . 

. 102,893,851 

Washington . 

. 278,079,235 

Wheeling . 

. 72,000,600 

Wilmington, Del . 

. 61,727,836 

Total Eastern States . . . 

.$91,021,312,496 

Atlanta . 

. $230,067,592 

Augusta. 

. 83,838,140 

Birmingham . 

. 93,945,498 

Chattanooga . 

. 69,766,032 

Fort Worth . 

. 508,491,520 

Galveston . 

. 682,902,000 

Houston . 

. 1,063,835,612 

Tacksonville, Fla . 

. 73,194,127 

Knoxville . 

. 71,654,489 

Lexington . 

. 32,354,298 

Little Rock. 

. 71,022,889 

Louisville . 

. 579,863,327 

Macon . 

. 36,237,094 

Memphis . 

. 252,991,081 

Nashville . 

. 153,675,903 

New Orleans . 

. 786,097,353 

Norfolk . 

. 111,079,245 

Richmond . 

. 298,532,561 

Savannah . 

194,180,377 

Vicksburg . 

. 18,406,580 


Total Southern States . $5,412,104,718 


Akron . 

Bloomington 

Canton .. 

Chicago . 

Cincinnati . 

Cleveland. 

Columbus . 

Davenport . 

Dayton . 

Des Moines. 

Detroit . 

Evansville . 

Grand Rapids . . 
Indianapolis 
Jacksonville, Ill. 

Kalamazoo . 

Milwaukee . 

Minneapolis 

Peoria . 

Quincy. 

Rockford . 

Sioux City . 

Sioux Falls 
Springfield, Ill. 
Springfield, Ohio 

St. Joseph . 

St. Louis . 

St. Paul . 

Toledo . 

Youngstown .... 


$30,629,250 

24,784,426 

25,721,069 

11,853,814,943 

1,230,180,300 

749,846,709 

253,756,600 

55,520,161 

81,235,277 

147,746,846 

668,047,524 

93,965,445 

106.803.257 
380,372,084 

12,937,920 

50,520,060 

547,569,294 

1,057,468,860 

134,689,657 

25,696,053 

30,576,274 

113,472,005 

29,251,108 

43,082,990 

20,125,550 

259.340.258 
3,165,619,327 

483,976,978 

180,169,933 

34,791,423 


Total Middle States .$21,891,711,581 




















































































CLEMATIS—CLEMENS 


Colorado Springs . $33,593,494 

Denver. 409,996,642 

Fargo ... 30,894,939 

Fremont . 16,792,953 

Kansas City . 1,848,511,393 

Omaha . 602,525,867 

Topeka . 55,870,990 

Wichita . 72,948,070 


Total Western States . $3,071,134,348 

Helena . $41,300,978 

Los Angeles . 505,588,756 

Oklahoma City . 52,635,058 

Portland, Ore. . 310,656,513 

Salt Lake City. 257,033,974 

San Francisco . 1,757,151,850 

Seattle . 429,499,251 

Spokane. 307,791,482 

Tacoma . 218,058,600 


Total Pacific States . $3,879,716,462 


Clematis, a genus of the buttercup fam¬ 
ily. There are over one hundred fifty 
species; about twenty in North America. 
The wild species are chiefly copsewood 
climbers with inconspicuous, greenish flow¬ 
ers and long-tailed, cottony fruit; or else 
they are low, erect, few-flowered herbs 
with bell-shaped purple sepals. The best 
known species is the common virgin’s 
bower. The latter and the cultivated spe¬ 
cies are fine trellis climbers. Blue, white, 
purple, and rose colored, they offer fine 
shade and masses of rich color. See But¬ 
tercup. 

Clemenceau, Eugene (1841-), a 
French political leader and journalist. He 
studied medicine at Paris, began to prac¬ 
tice, but was drawn into local politics. 
When the Franco-Prussian War came on 
he found himself a leader of the radical 
party and mayor of the Montmartre sec¬ 
tion of the city. In 1876 he became the 
leader of the radical Republicans in the 
Chamber of Deputies. Clemenceau was in 
position more than once to head the French 
ministry, but as often refused, preferring 
to be on the offensive rather than the de¬ 
fensive. He suffered severely in reputa¬ 
tion on account of the De Lesseps-Panama 
scandals, and failed of reelection. He is 
known best perhaps as the editor of La 
Justice, the organ of the radical party. 

In 1902 he was elected to the Senate, 
and in 1906 he became minister of the in¬ 
terior and premier of France. He was 


the strongest prime minister that had ever 
held office. In policy, he was strongly 
national, and opposed both to clericalism 
and socialism. In the “Revolt of the 
Midi,” the wine growers of France, he put 
down the agitators with a strong hand; 
and though subjected to much criticism, he 
received a strong vote of confidence in the 
Chamber. Although the Clemenceau min¬ 
istry had to undergo various interpellations 
by the Socialists and other anti-government 
parties, it was able to withstand attacks 
until 1909. In that year an investigation 
of naval conditions led to the resignation 
of Clemenceau, after the longest term as 
premier of any minister who has held of¬ 
fice under the Third Republic. He is the 
author of several interesting works. 

Clemens, Samuel Langhorne (1835- 
1910), an American humorist. He is 
known more generally as Mark Twain, a 
name he is said to have picked up on a 
Mississippi steamboat, through hearing the 
sounder announce the depth of the water 
at the bow. He was born at Florida, Mis¬ 
souri. His education was somewhat less 
than that of an ordinary district school. 
He learned to set type in a local town, and 
later worked at the printer’s trade in Phil¬ 
adelphia, New York, and elsewhere. He 
took to steamboating and became a pilot. 
On the appointment of a brother to the 
secretaryship of Nevada Territory, Samuel 
was appointed to a clerical position. He 
tried his fortune in silver mining, became 
local editor of a newspaper in Virginia 
City, and later turned up in San Fran¬ 
cisco, where he worked as a reporter. For 
a time he prospected in the Calaveras gold 
field; then worked again in San Francisco. 
Not satisfied with this varied experience, he 
went as far westward as the Sandwich Is¬ 
lands, and on his return took a trip to the 
Mediterranean regions. After editing a 
newspaper in Buffalo for a time, he mar¬ 
ried Olivia Langdon of Elmira, New York, 
and settled in Hartford, Connecticut, 
where he died in 1910. 

Mr. Clemens was laid at rest in the 
family burial plot at Elmira beside his 
wife over whose remains he had previously 
erected a simple marble stone, bearing this 
epitaph: 























CLEMENS—CLEOPATRA 


Warm summer sun, 

Shine kindly here; 

Warm southern wind. 

Blow softly here. 

Green sky above, 

Lie light, lie light; 

Good night, dear heart; 

Good night, good night; 

Like Sir Walter Scott, Mr. Clemens had 
experience in publishing. In 1884 he 
founded the publishing firm of Charles L. 
Webster and Company. During the finan¬ 
cial depression of 1894, the firm failed. 
This disaster swept away the author’s for¬ 
tune, and left him in debt to the extent of 
$100,000. This he paid in full and died a 
wealthy man. 

Nearly all his books were published by 
subscription. Nearly 1,000,000 copies 
were sold in this way. Most of his works 
have been translated into German, French, 
Italian, Norwegian, Danish, and other 
tongues. As many copies of his books have 
been sold in Great Britain as in America. 

Named in order of appearance, his prin¬ 
cipal works are The Jumping Frog, The 
Innocents Abroad, Roughing It, Adven¬ 
tures of Tom Sawyer, A Tramp Abroad, 
Life on the Mississippi, Huckleberry Finn. 
The twenty-five volume set of Mark 
Twain’s works advertised by Harper & 
Brothers in 1909 includes the following 
titles ; 

The Innocents Abroad. 

A Tramp Abroad. 

Follotving the Equator. 

Roughing It. 

Life on the Mississippi. 

The Gilded Age. 

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. 

Huckleberry Finn. 

Pudd’nhead Wilson. 

The Prince and the Pauper. 

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur* s 
Court. 

Joan of Arc. 

Sketches New and Old. 

Tom Sawyer Abroad. 

American Claimant. 

Literary Essays. 

The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg. 

The $30,000 Bequest. 

Christian Science. 

Mark Twain takes high rank among 
American humorists. He possessed some¬ 
thing more, too, than the ability of a mere 
fun-maker. He was a close observer of 


men and an effective interpreter of what 
he had observed. His writings, however, 
are marked by a striking inequality. “His 
books contain much that is flat, stale, and 
unprofitable,” Bronson says, and this is 
true, though hardly more than should be 
anticipated from one who writes so prolif-, 
ically and is always expected to create a 
laugh. 

Mark Twain originally of Missouri, then pro¬ 
visionally of Hartford, and now ultimately of the 
Solar System, not to say the Universe.—Howells. 

Time will winnow much chaff from his pages, 
but much of great merit will remain.—Bronson. 

No American author has at his command a 
style more nervous, more varied, more flexible, 
or more direct than Mark Twain.—Brander 
Matthews. 

Clement V, Pope from 1305-1314. At 
the instance of the French monarch, he sup¬ 
pressed the order of the Templars and re¬ 
moved the seat of the papacy to Avignon. 

Clement XIII, Pope from 1758-1769. 
He supported the Jesuits against the de¬ 
mands of France, Spain, and Portugal for 
their suppression. 

Clement XIV, Pope from 1769-1774. 
He was elected by anti-Jesuit influences and 
carried out the desired policy. Twenty-four 
thousand Jesuits and their missions all over 
the world were disbanded by order of 
Clement in 1773, nor was the order reha¬ 
bilitated until 1814. 

Cleopatra, kleo-pa/tra (99-30 B. C.). 
A queen of Egypt. The last of the 
Ptolemies. She was a handsome, prof¬ 
ligate, artful woman. Many tales are told 
of her beauty, of her extravagance, and 
of her faithlessness, but none, of her good 
qualities. Her capital was Alexandria. 
Her kingdom was one of the fragments 
of the empire of Alexander. It lay, as 
she well knew, at the mercy of Rome. 
She murdered her husband that she might 
be free to intrigue. By personal influence 
she secured the good will of Rome dur¬ 
ing the rule of Julius Caesar, who received 
her at Rome with great magnificence and 
to whom she bore a son called Caesarion. 
After the assassination of Caesar, An¬ 
tony—the same Mark Antony who made 
the celebrated speech over Caesar’s dead 
body—visited her at Alexandria and fell 


CLEOPATRA’S NEEDLES—CLEVELAND 


into her snares. He forsook his Roman 
wife and lived chiefly at Alexandria the 
rest of his days, heaping wealth and hon¬ 
ors on Cleopatra. Augustus decided to 
dissolve partnership with Antony and to 
overthrow him. This he did in a naval 
battle at Actium, during which Cleopa¬ 
tra fled home with her sixty ships. An¬ 
tony followed and committed suicide by 
falling on his sword. Cleopatra tried to 
make peace with Augustus as she had 
with Caesar and with Antony. Finding 
that she was making no headway, and that 
Augustus designed to carry her home and 
have her walk in his triumphal procession 
through the streets of Rome, she caused 
a slave to bring her a basket of fruit in 
which a poisonous asp was concealed. 
Preferring death to humiliation, she thrust 
in her bare arm, so runs the story, and 
received a mortal bite. Conscience she 
had none; but her pride was unbounded. 
Thus perished the last of the Ptolemies. 
Egypt became thenceforth a Roman prov¬ 
ince. See Antony; Alexandria. 

If Cleopatra’s death had been caused by any 
serpent, the small viper would rather have been 
chosen than the large asp; but the story is dis¬ 
proved by her having decked herself in “the 
royal ornaments,” and being found dead “with¬ 
out any mark of suspicion of poison on her 
body.” Death from a serpent’s bite could not 
have been mistaken; and her vanity would not 
have allowed her to choose one which would 
have disfigured her in so frightful a manner. 
Other poisons are well understood and easy of 
access, and no boy would have ventured to carry 
an asp in a basket of figs, some of which he 
even offered to the guards as he passed; and 
Plutarch shows that the story of the asp was 
doubted. Nor is the statue carried in Augustus’ 
triumph which had an asp upon it any proof 
of his belief in it, since that snake was the em¬ 
blem of Egyptian royalty; the statue (or the 
crown) of Cleopatra could not have been with¬ 
out one, and this was probably the origin of 
the whole story.—Rawlinson. 

Cleopatra’s Needles, two Egyptian 
obelisks or monumental stones of rose red 
granite. They were erected originally by 
an Egyptian king in front of the portico 
of a great temple to the sun which stood 
on the banks of the Nile at Heliopolis, 
near the birthplace of Moses. Before the 
Christian era and during the Roman" oc¬ 
cupancy of Egypt, but not in the reign 
of Cleopatra, the obelisks were brought 


down the Nile and set up at Alexandria, 
where they fell over in the sand and were 
neglected for centuries. In 1878 one of 
them was brought to London and set up 
on the Thames embankment. The other 
was given a place of honor in Central 
Park, New York City. They are nearly 
of a size. Each is composed of a single 
block of granite. Both are four-sided and 
taper upward. The Central Park obelisk 
measures 7 feet 9^4 inches by 8 feet 2^4 
inches at the base, and is 67 feet 2 inches 
in height. The four surfaces are inscribed 
with hieroglyphs cut to a depth of sev¬ 
eral inches and carefully polished. The 
top is a short, four-sided pyramid, on each 
side of which is cut a bas-relief represent¬ 
ing the sun god of the ancient city of 
Heliopolis. In the rainless, warm climate 
of Egypt, the obelisks remained for cen¬ 
turies as fresh as when they first came 
•from the quarry and chisel of the ancient 
Egyptians; but the rain and frost of Cen¬ 
tral Park have caused a certain amount 
of chipping and peeling which the author¬ 
ities have tried to prevent by applying a 
coating of oil at frequent intervals. See 
Central Park; Alexandria; Obelisk. 

Clepsydra, klep'si-dra, a contrivance 
for measuring time by the flow of 
water through an orifice. This is an an¬ 
cient timepiece said to have been in use 
2000 B. C. In its simplest form it is 
a hollow cylinder with an orifice in the 
bottom of such size that the water runs 
out in a certain number of hours. The 
descent of water in the tube or tank indi¬ 
cates the hour of the day or night. In 
its later forms it was furnished with a 
dial like that of a clock, the hands of 
which were operated by clockwork set in 
motion by means of weights and regulated 
by a float of wood or cork riding on the 
sinking surface of the water. Sometimes 
mercury was used instead of water. The 
clepsydra was superseded by the invention 
of the pendulum. See Hourglass ; 
Clock. 

Cleveland, a lake port of northern Ohio. 
It is situated on a level beach, on both 
sides of the Cuyahoga River, 115 feet above 
the surface of Lake Erie. The mouth of 
the river has been dredged and affords a 


CLEVELAND 


capacious harbor, having several miles of 
wharfage. Its area is enlarged and pro¬ 
tected by an immense outlying breakwater 
or dyke of masonry, constructed by the gen¬ 
eral government at an expense of $8,000,- 
000. The valley of the river is filled with 
warehouses, depots, coal sheds, and grimy 
factories. The two parts of the city are 
united by two enormous overhead viaducts 
or elevated roadways that pass from bluff 
to bluff across the valley. 

The city is the metropolis of the West¬ 
ern Reserve. It was named for General 
Moses Cleaveland, its founder. It was 
intended originally to be the capital of 
a state to be called New Connecticut. It 
was laid out 1796. The first library was 
started in 1811; the first bank in 1816; 
the first newspaper in 1818; in 1824 the 
first steamer was launched from its ship¬ 
yard; in 1828 the bar was cut away from 
the entrance to the river; in 1851 the first 
railroad was built. 

The growth of the city is due to its 
manufactures and commerce. Iron ores 
from Minnesota and Pennsylvania, and 
coal from Ohio, make Cleveland one of 
the great iron manufacturing cities of the 
Union. It leads in nails and wire, and is 
second in hardware. The most important 
shipyards on the Great Lakes are here. 
The foundry and machine shop products 
are rated at nearly $50,000,000 a year. 
The bulk of the bolts, rivets, nuts, and 
washers sold in a western hardware store 
are made here. Next to iron work, come 
meat-packing, clothing, beer, petroleum 
and paint. 

The Ohio Canal terminates at Cleve¬ 
land and brings in a large amount of coal 
and agricultural products. Counting iron 
and copper, Cleveland is the greatest ore 
market in the world. Western grain goes 
largely to Buffalo. Western ore' is mar¬ 
keted chiefly at Cleveland. It is a great 
market for petroleum and lumber. About 
fifty lines of lake steamers make the city 
their headquarters. 

Cleveland has been noted from the first 
for the intelligence and taste of its inhabit¬ 
ants. An excellent system of public elemen¬ 
tary and high schools is reinforced by the 
Western Reserve University and the Case 


School of Applied Science. A public li¬ 
brary contains 200,000 volumes. The vari¬ 
ous college libraries have as many more. 
Population in 1910, 560,663. 

See Garfield; Western Reserve; 
Erie. 

Cleveland, Grover (1837-1908), the 
twenty-second president of the United 
States. He was born March 18, 1837, at 
Caldwell, New Jersey. His father was a 
Presbyterian minister. Cleveland was well 
prepared in classics and mathematics, but 
did not enter college. He taught for a 
time and studied law. He was admitted 
to the bar in 1859. He opened an office 
in Buffalo, New York. He was known 
as an able, fearless lawyer. He was a 
Democrat in politics. In 1863 he was ap¬ 
pointed district attorney of Erie County, 
in which Buffalo is situated. In 1870 he 
was elected sheriff. In 1881 he was elected 
mayor. He made a reputation in that of¬ 
fice. In 1882 he was nominated for gov¬ 
ernor by the Democrats of New York, and 
was elected by the unprecedented majority 
of 200,000 votes. A reputation for up¬ 
rightness in office, and an ability to carry 
New York, made him the nominee of the 
Democratic party for the presidency in 
1884. He was elected over James G. 
Blaine by an electoral majority of thirty- 
seven. Cleveland was the first Demo¬ 
cratic president since the day of James 
Buchanan. Cleveland was defeated for 
the presidency by Benjamin Harrison in 
1888; yet in 1892 he was again nominated 
and defeated Harrison. 

During his presidential terms Cleveland 
made a reputation by vetoing more meas¬ 
ures than all his predecessors put together. 
Many of these were pension measures, well 
enough in themselves, but not matters for 
Congressional attention, in Cleveland’s 
opinion. He thought that these cases 
should be allowed to take their regular 
routine course in the department of pen¬ 
sions. He proposed an income tax. He 
was known abroad as a vigorous supporter 
of the Monroe Doctrine. He has been 
criticised for the use of Federal troops in 
clearing the way for the United States mail 
during the labor strike in Chicago. He 
held he was discharging a duty of his office. 


CLIFF DWELLERS—CLIMATE 


President Cleveland was married during 
his first term of office. On retiring from 
the presidency, he took up his residence 
at Princeton, New Jersey. He wrote a 
number of articles for various periodicals, 
lectured in the college, and spoke repeated¬ 
ly on public occasions. He was, how¬ 
ever, a man of ample means. He pre¬ 
ferred to lead an independent life. He 
had a reputation of being fond of fishing 
and of hunting. It is too early to form 
an estimate of President Cleveland’s pub¬ 
lic services, but it is safe to say that he 
ranks among the upper third of American 
presidents. He died June 24, 1908. 

See President. 

Cliff Dwellers, an Indian tribe for¬ 
merly dwelling in the cliffs bordering the 
canons of the Rio Grande and the Colo¬ 
rado. The dwellings were excavated in the 
cliffs, and consisted often of several rooms 
with doorways and windows having wood¬ 
en sills. It is thought that the open¬ 
ings were closed by hangings of the 
skins of wild animals. The interior 
was neatly plastered with native clay, 
suitable for the purpose. Often the 
outer wall was built of stonework laid 
in clay, or of adobe. These dwellings 
were made usually high up in the face of 
a cliff, sometimes 300 feet. Many are 
now inaccessible, owing to the crumbling 
away of the ledges along which the build¬ 
ers made their way. As the country is 
quite rocky and barren, the inhabitants 
must have depended on the river valley 
for hunting and fishing. These ancient 
Indians understood irrigation. They raised 
corn, beans, watermelons, cotton, and to¬ 
bacco. They domesticated the turkey. 
Some explorers claim to have found traces 
of the Andean llama. The arts of weav¬ 
ing and of making pottery were under¬ 
stood. Their weapons and tools were of 
bone or flint. Metals, save copper orna¬ 
ments, were seemingly unknown. Judging 
from the ruins, some of the communities 
must have comprised at least 1,000 persons. 
One of these old strongholds contained 127 
apartments. For some account of their 
supposed descendants, see Pueblos. 

In scores of such canyons we explored the 
ruins of structures made by some ancient race, 


more ancient than any others which have left 
traces of their existence in America. There we 
found stone axes and spear heads, cords made 
from fiber of the oose plant, pieces of feathered 
funeral robes, sandals skilfully woven of fiber, 
long pieces of beautifully twisted black thread, 
strong and lustrous as silk; bone needles and 
awls; but never a bit of -metal of any description. 
Pieces of well decorated pottery are strewn every¬ 
where. Many of the walls are covered with 
hieroglyphics, most of them rude and intended 
to convey simple thoughts, although sometimes 
they appear to have been sketched by a master 
hand and to have a more complicated meaning. 
They seem to have been brief epitaphs, showing 
the exploits of those who are sepulchered among 
the near-by ledges. Some of the ruins are easy 
of access, while others can only be entered with 
great toil, and by the use of rope ladders. One 
of the largest in White Canyon is supplied with 
the remains of an ancient ladder. Above this, 
steps have been cut out in the rock, and a stair¬ 
way of crumbling cedar affords a dangerous but 
possible means of ascent. This lofty cave is 
well fortified, and contains a number of apart¬ 
ments, pottery kilns, and storehouses. Here, as in 
other places, the walls show many handprints 
stained with red, brown, and white pigments, as 
though the inhabitants had proclaimed their 
titles to the places by setting their hand and seal 
upon them.—H. L. A. Culmer, in Technical 
World Magazine . 

« 

Climate, the characteristic condition of 
a country with reference to heat, moisture, 
wind, and healthfulness. If a region be 
studied, it will be found that while the 
winters may differ greatly from year to 
year, average conditions are much the 
same. One day may be clear, another 
cloudy; yet the rainfall in the Mohawk 
Valley for any series of ten years is much 
the same. One day may be hot, the next 
cool; yet the average temperature of New 
Orleans from year to year varies little. The 
same is true of winds. One day may be 
windy, the next calm; yet a region sub¬ 
ject to south winds will have much the 
same amount of south wind from year to 
year. The rainy winds of India do not 
blow from the south for a series of years, 
then turn around and blow from the north 
for a few years. Weather is very change¬ 
able ; climate varies little. 

Latitude is the chief factor that affects 
climate. Our heat is derived from the 
sun. The nearer the equator, the more 
vertical are the sun’s rays. Within the 
tropics a bundle of rays spreads over less 
than half the surface that it covers within 


CLIMATE—CLIMBING-PERCH 


the polar circles. The poles are about 4,000 
miles farther from the sun than is the 
equator; but the sun is so far from the 
earth that this slight difference in distance 
has no practical effect. The coldness of 
the Arctic regions is due to the fact that 
an acre of ground receives only half as 
much heat as an acre in the torrid zone. 

Altitude, or height above the sea level, 
is another important factor. The earth’s 
atmosphere, that is to say, the air, allows 
the heat of the sun to pass through it 
freely to the earth’s surface, but acts like 
a blanket, preventing the escape of the 
radiated heat; that is to say, heat coming 
from the sun comes through the air readi¬ 
ly, but is so changed by radiation on turn¬ 
ing back from the earth that it cannot es¬ 
cape through the air readily. The higher 
one ascends above the sea level the less 
dense the air. High plateaus and moun¬ 
tain ranges are colder than corresponding 
regions at the sea level, not because they 
receive less heat from the sun, but be¬ 
cause they have a thinner air blanket with 
which to retain the heat. An increase of 
300 feet in altitude is considered equiva¬ 
lent to an increase of one degree in tem¬ 
perature. Scientists allow a change of 
one degree in temperature for each 300 
feet of ascent. The summits of the moun¬ 
tains in the Andes lying directly on the 
equator are covered with snow the year 
around, and have much the same climate 
as is found at the sea level in northern 
Greenland. 

Moisture is an important factor in cli¬ 
mate. The Pacific and Atlantic coasts of 
South America, particularly in the latitude 
of the La Plata, have a very different cli¬ 
mate owing to a difference, chiefly, in rain¬ 
fall. The prevailing winds in this belt are 
from the east. The coast of southern 
Brazil has abundant rainfall, which ex¬ 
tends inward for a long distance. The 
winds are robbed of their moisture, how¬ 
ever, by the Andes, so that the Pacific 
coast of northern Chile lying in sight of 
the ocean is practically a rainless desert, 
almost devoid of vegetation. Some regions 
have so much rain that they are swampy 
and unhealthful. Ocean currents modify 
the climate of the Pacific Coast. 


Two types of climate—the continental 
and the oceanic—require special mention. 
Water heats more slowly and cools more 
slowly than land. Large bodies of water, 
therefore, prevent excessive heat in summer 
and excessive cold in winter. The British 
Isles, surrounded entirely by the ocean, 
have a cool summer and a warm winter. 
They possess an oceanic climate. The up¬ 
per Mississippi Valley, on the contrary, 
remote from the ocean, warms up in the 
summer and cools off in winter. It pos¬ 
sesses a continental climate. 

Generally speaking, a region having a 
medium temperature with a moderate 
amount of rainfall, well distributed 
through the year, is considered to have 
the most desirable climate. Local pride 
usually comes to the defense of local cli¬ 
mate. Most would agree, however, that 
central and western Europe, and portions 
of North America, have the most desirable 
climate in the world. 

Climbing-Perch, a sort of spiny-rayed 
fish remarkable for its need of fresh air 
and its ability to climb. It is a native of 
the East Indies. During rainy weather it 
leaves the water and actually ascends the 
trunks of palm trees to a height some¬ 
what above a man’s head in search of flies 
and other insects. It manages to climb 
by means of its tail, fins, and the peculiar 
saw-shaped edges of its gill covers. In 
this manner it advances its body an inch 
or so at a time. The story of climb¬ 
ing fishes was long regarded as an in¬ 
vention of the oriental imagination, or of 
equally untrustworthy travelers; but it is 
now accepted by scientists. “A fish out 
of water” is popularly supposed to be an 
impossibility, or, at the most, a very un¬ 
comfortable one; but this fish seems to 
be an exception. Sacs of water in the 
sides of the head seem to supply the mois¬ 
ture needed by the gills. See Fish. 

Clinton, De Witt (1769-1828), a gov¬ 
ernor of New York. He was a lawyer 
of New York City and held many impor¬ 
tant positions, including the mayoralty of 
the city and a seat in the United States Sen¬ 
ate; but his chief service was an insistent, 
intelligent, foreseeing advocacy, in season 
and out of season, of the building of the 


CLINTON—CLOACA MAXIMA 


Erie Canal from Buffalo, through the Mo¬ 
hawk Valley, to the Hudson. The story 
of his struggles with prejudice, ignorance, 
indifference, delay, and jealousy, and his 
final triumphant ride in the autumn of 
1825 in a barge from one end of the com¬ 
pleted waterway to the other, reads like 
a romance. He died in office. The com¬ 
mercial supremacy and growth of New 
York date from the successful issue of 
Governor Clinton’s policy. See New 
York; Erie Canal. 

Clinton, George (1739-1812), an 
American soldier and statesman prominent 
during the Revolution. He was a native 
of New York and received a most careful 
education at home. He served in the 
French and Indian War, at the close of 
which he took up the study of law, soon 
becoming interested in politics. He was 
elected to the colonial assembly where he 
was recognized as a leader among the 
Whigs. In 1 775 he was elected delegate to 
the Continental Congress, and two years 
later was appointed brigadier-general in 
the Continental Army. The same year he 
was elected governor of New York a posi¬ 
tion of much difficulty at that time owing 
to the large number of Tories in the state. 
Clinton filled this office for eighteen years, 
showing great ability and discretion in his 
administration of civil affairs as well as 
in his military services. He opposed the 
adoption of the Federal Constitution be¬ 
cause he believed it gave too much power 
to national officers. Alexander Hamilton, 
however, carried the state against him. In 
1804 he was elected to the vice-presidency 
with Jefferson as president. He filled this 
office until his death. 

Clinton, the county seat of Clinton 
County, Iowa. It is situated on the Missis¬ 
sippi forty-two miles above Davenport. 
It is served by several railroads, and has 
communication by steamboat with other 
river towns. Bridges crossing the river at 
this point connect the city with Illinois. The 
industries include paper mills, foundries, 
machine and car shops, and manufacture of 
glucose, furniture, wire-cloth, wagons, 
doors, and sashes. The city has two 
academies and Wartburg College is located 
here. The population in 1910 was 25,577. 


Clio, kll'd, in Greek mythology usually 
the muse of history. She was the daughter 
of Zeus and Mnemosyne, and the mother of 
Hyacinthus and Hymenaeus. She is usu¬ 
ally represented in a sitting posture, her 
head crowned with laurel, a roll of papy¬ 
rus in her hand. There is also in Greek 
mythology a sea-nymph, daughter of 
Oceanus, named Clio. 

Clio, a pseudonym of Addison, formed 
from the various signatures “C,” “L,” “I,” 
“O,” used by him in The Spectator. The 
letters probably stood for Chelsea, Lon¬ 
don, Islington, and the Office, the places 
where the essays were composed. 

Clipper, a fast sailing vessel. The clip¬ 
per is to sailing vessels what the ocean 
greyhound is to steamships, or the race 
horse to cart horses. The desire for speed 
led to the building of slender, graceful 
ships of great depth, for carrying fast 
freight. The superiority of steamships has 
caused the clipper to lose its place in pub¬ 
lic importance; but in the early half of the 
last century the record of the fastest clip¬ 
per was of as much interest as the world’s 
record for the trotting horse. An average 
of fifteen miles an hour for a long voy¬ 
age was considered extraordinary. 

Clive, Robert (1725-1774), an English 
soldier. His name is connected with the 
conquest and occupancy of India by Great 
Britain. He began service in India as a 
clerk, but exhibited military ability during 
the uprisings of the natives against the 
East India Company. He defeated the 
native nabob of Bengal in the battle of 
Plassey, June, 1 755, and was appointed 
governor. His administration was made 
the subject of a Parliamentary inquiry. It 
will not bear a close examination, but if 
the acquisition of India is to be regard¬ 
ed as a great event, the name of Clive 
must be linked in fame with that of War¬ 
ren Hastings as one of the men who 
brought about the result. Browning’s 
poem, Clive, gives a striking portrait. See 
India; Hastings. 

Cloaca Maxima, klo-a'ka mak'si-ma, a 
great stone sewer of Rome. It passes un¬ 
der the forum and discharges into the 
Tiber. It is an excellent piece of engineer¬ 
ing, dating from the time of Augustus. It 


/ 


CLOAK—CLOCK 


is still in use, but is absolutely prosaic 
and disagreeable, of interest chiefly to his¬ 
torians and scholars. The masonry con¬ 
sists of three concentric circles of hewn 
stones. The interior is about thirteen feet 
in diameter. The bodies of criminals dis¬ 
played in the forum for the pleasure of 
the mob were usually thrown through a 
hole into this main sewer. A little statue 
near by was dedicated to Juno as the pa¬ 
troness of drainage purity. 

Cloak, klok, properly a loose, sleeveless 
outer garment worn as a protection against 
the weather. The name is erroneously used 
to designate a garment with sleeves, worn 
as an outer wrap by women. This gar¬ 
ment is properly a coat. The name cloak 
is derived from an Anglo-Saxon word 
meaning bell, and was given to this gar¬ 
ment on account of its flowing shape. The 
cloak was originally a garment worn by 
either sex. At various times, it has been 
an essential and picturesque part of man’s 
attire. In the United States the cloak 
is now a woman’s wrap; but in some coun¬ 
tries it is still worn by men, and is a 
comfortable and satisfactory garment. 

During the reign of Edward IV in Eng¬ 
land the cloak was the gentleman’s gar¬ 
ment. Laws were enacted to regulate its 
length and to designate the persons who 
should be allowed to wear it. During the 
sixteenth century the cloak came to be a 
garment of everyday wear. It was cut 
with large, loose armholes. The style is 
plainly shown in certain portraits of Hen¬ 
ry VIII. A hundred years later the chang¬ 
ing fashion of the coat caused the cloak 
to be done away with, except as a protec¬ 
tion from cold and storm. The form of 
the cloak has changed with other fashions. 
At one time a half circle was the approv¬ 
ed shape. This was called the Spanish 
cloak. It was trimmed with bands of fur 
which followed the contour of the neck, 
and extended down the edges of the cloak 
in front. In wearing, one edge was thrown 
across the opposite shoulder. This style 
of cloak is still worn in certain Italian 
cities. 

For many years in America the shawl 
was the common outer garment for women. 

About 1810 the pelisse, a long, loose cloak 
11-13 


with sleeves, came into fashion, and, on 
account of its warmth and convenience, was 
much in vogue. Spencer jackets, or short 
cloaks, were worn at various times. From 
1840 to 1860, the shawl was again the 
popular wrap. The beginning of the 
modern cloak seems to have been an at¬ 
tempt to cut and shape the shawl into a 
warmer garment, and one that would al¬ 
low the hands to be used while the arms 
remained covered. 

About 1865 heavy cloaks came into fash¬ 
ion. Soon it was found that the former 
methods of home and individual manu¬ 
facture were unsatisfactory, when applied 
to thick, heavy materials. The beginning 
of the trade in ready-to-wear cloaks was 
made by a few of the larger New York 
houses. A small number of cloaks were 
made up from the best Parisian models. 
So successful did this attempt prove that 
some firms gave up their other business 
entirely for cloakmaking. At first the 
cloaks were cut in one size only; soon in 
three sizes, small, large, and medium. At 
present many sizes are made, so that any 
figure may be fitted in readymade cloaks. 

In the early days of cloak making a 
fashion was good for a whole season. The 
manufacturer could anticipate the trade 
and make up a stock beforehand. At pres¬ 
ent this is impossible, as fashions change 
so suddenly. The result is that cloakmak¬ 
ing establishments are large, employ an 
immense number of workers, and are man¬ 
aged with the best possible system, that 
satisfactory garments may be turned out 
on short notice. The successful manufac¬ 
turer must have judgment and ability to 
foresee the public taste, that he may meet 
the demand without producing an over 
supply. The inspectors of cloth, fit, and 
workmanship are responsible members of 
the force, and good models, or “figures” 
to whom the garment may be fitted, are 
much in demand. 

Clock, a machine intended to measure 
time by the movements of wheelwork. The 
chief parts of a clock are a frame or case, 
a train of wheels, moved by weights or a 
spring and regulated by the beats of a 
pendulum or by a balance wheel. The 
original meaning of the term clock is a 


CLOCK 


bell. It was applied at first only to the 
portion of the mechanism which struck the 
hours, but after a time the name was ex¬ 
tended to the entire timepiece. The an¬ 
cient term horologe, meaning literally, tell¬ 
ing the hour, is a more appropriate term. 

Mention of the clock may be found in 
old chronicles dating from the time of 
Charlemagne, and literary traces such as, 
“the clock struck the hour,” and “the 
hand of the clock,” may be found in the 
writings of the Middle Ages. It is thought 
that the earliest clocks were the work of 
the Saracens from whom the art of clock¬ 
making was learned by the monks of 
Europe. Many remarkable timepieces are 
to be found in the clock towers of Euro¬ 
pean cities. A number of clocks of more 
or less wonderful workmanship were made 
for the various cathedrals of Europe dur¬ 
ing the thirteenth and fourteenth centu¬ 
ries. 

One of these celebrated clocks is found 
in the south transept of Strasburg Cathe¬ 
dral. The original clock was built in the 
thirteenth century. It has been pulled 
down and replaced twice. The present 
structure contains only a few pieces and 
decorative paintings of the old clock. It 
has a number of features which never cease 
to attract admiring spectators. The clock 
consists of four stories and turrets. On 
the lowest level a guardian deity steps 
forth, one for each day in the week; Apol¬ 
lo, drawn in a chariot by horses, on Sun¬ 
day; Diana, drawn by a stag, on Monday; 
on Tuesday, Mars; Wednesday, Mercury; 
Thursday, Jupiter; Friday, Venus; Satur¬ 
day, Saturn. A wooden angel standing in 
the first gallery, corresponding to the low¬ 
er porch of a house, strikes the quarter 
hours on a bell held in his hand; while a 
genius standing at his side, reverses a 
sandglass. On the next gallery a skeleton 
of death, surrounded by four figures rep¬ 
resenting boyhood, youth, manhood, and 
old age, strikes the hour with a bone. On 
the third gallery, at noon of each day, 
the twelve apostles walk around a figure 
of th*. Saviour, bowing at his feet while he 
makes die sign of the cross. During the 
procession, a wooden cock perched on one 
of the pinnacles flaps his wings, stretches 


his neck, and crows, to the great delight 
of little folk. 

The clock tower of the English House 
of Parliament contains a notable modern 
clock. The dials are twenty-three feet in 
diameter, and are set one hundred eighty 
feet above the ground. There are three in¬ 
dependent sets of clockwork; one turns the 
hands, another strikes the hours, the third 
plays a set of chimes. The pendulum is 
about thirteen feet long and weighs be¬ 
tween six and seven hundred pounds. It 
takes five hours to wind up the striking 
parts. The Large bell on which the hours 
are struck is called Big Ben. It weighs 
thirteen tons and in calm weather it can 
be heard all over London. This clock 
cost over $100,000. It is considered one 
of the most accurate of the large timekeep¬ 
ers. 

In America, clock making had its be¬ 
ginning prior to the Revolutionary War. 
The first clocks were tall, eight-day pieces, 
driven by weights requiring to be wound up 
but once a week. This style, now known 
as the grandfather’s clock, was made en¬ 
tirely by hand. The works lasted for 
many years, and were placed in cases vary¬ 
ing in style from a rude pine box colored 
with cheap stain to specimens of the rich¬ 
est cabinet work. This is the style of 
clock referred to by Longfellow in his 
well known lines: 

And from its station in the hall 
An ancient timepiece says to all,— 

“Forever—never ! 

Never—forever!” 

Half-way up the stairs it stands, 

And points and beckons with its hands 
From its case of massive oak, 

Like a monk, who, under his cloak. 

Crosses himself, and sighs, alas! 

With sorrowful voice to all who pass,— 
“Forever—never ! 

Never—forever!” 

The great height of the early clocks was 
necessary to allow the weights to descend, 
and to give room for a long pendulum to 
swing. With the adoption of coiled 
springs instead of weights, shorter clocks 
grew into favor, and were made smaller- 
and smaller, until, as a matter of fact, it is 
now difficult to draw the line between 
clocks and watches. The largest clock face 


CLOISTER AND THE HEARTH—CLOTHING 


in the world is said to be that mounted 
above the Colgate & Co. factory at Jer¬ 
sey City. The minute hand is twenty feet 
long. 

Some idea of the magnitude of the clock¬ 
making industry in the United States may 
be gained from the following statistics tak¬ 
en from our last census report: 


Capital employed .$8,792,653 

Wage earners. 6,037 

Annual wages .$2,650,703 

Annual cost of material used.$3,028,606 

Annual wholesale value of clocks.$7,157,856 


The clockmaking industry of the United 
States is centralized largely in Connecticut. 
Seven extensive Connecticut factories, with 
one at Boston and two in the vicinity of 
New York City, make over one-third of 
the clocks produced in America. Columbia 
University claims ownership of a clock 
that keeps time correct to within six sec¬ 
onds a year. 

Cloister and the Hearth, The, a his¬ 
torical novel by Charles Reade published 
in 1861. It is commonly regarded as 
Reade’s masterpiece. The plot is laid in 
the fifteenth century. It presents dis¬ 
tinct and faithful pictures of daily life 
in Holland, Germany, France, and Italy 
in medieval times. The story is intensely 
dramatic. The character drawing is 
strong. Above all, Reade has here suc¬ 
ceeded in portraying something of the 
strange combination of rugged brutality 
with a lofty spirituality which seems to 
have characterized the transition period. 
If the power displayed in the first part of 
this story were maintained throughout, it 
w T ould stand beyond question where Swin¬ 
burne places it “among the very greatest 
masterpieces of narration.” See Reade, 
Charles. 

Cloth of Gold, a fabric of splendid ap¬ 
pearance and great cost, much worn by 
the nobility during the Middle Ages. The 
manufacture and use are ancient. In the 
book of Exodus, where the vestments of 
the Jewish priests are described, it is said, 
“they did beat gold into thin plates and 
cut it into wires, to work it in the blue, 
and in the purple, and in the scarlet, and 
in the fine linen with cunning work.” Both 
“wires” and flat strips of gold were used 


in weaving cloth of gold. It was usually 
combined with silk, but fabrics wholly of 
gold ,are not uncommon. Cloth of gold 
was used lavishly during the reign of Hen¬ 
ry VIII of England. When Henry 
VIII and Francis I of France met in a 
plain near Ardres, France, in order to 
come to some understanding as to an alli¬ 
ance against Charles V of Spain, this cloth, 
then worth forty shillings, or nearly ten 
dollars a yard, was used so profusely by 
both nations that the place won the name 
of the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Heavy 
brocaded silk fabrics, interwoven with gold 
and silver, are used for ceremonial gar¬ 
ments by the Chinese and Japanese, and 
also for hangings and decorations in their 
theaters and temples. The Japanese weave 
strips of gilded paper, twisted into thread, 
with or without silk, into their silken fab¬ 
rics. These silks have the appearance of 
cloth of gold, but they are cheaper and 
more flexible. See Field of the Cloth 
of Gold.. 

Clothing, garments worn for the sake 
of modesty and as protection against heat 
and cold. Adam and Eve, typical no 
doubt in this respect of primitive man, 
“sewed fig leaves together and made them¬ 
selves aprons.” The customary picture of 
the cave man represents him girded with 
a short garment of skins. When first 
known, the Eskimo dressed wholly in skins. 

The study of costumes is fascinating. 
No doubt leaves, skins, and matting were 
the first materials. Weaving was prac¬ 
ticed at an early day. Cloth of wool, 
flax, silk, and cotton was known to the 
most ancient people of whom we have any 
knowledge. 

The garments of the Greeks may be 
taken as a type of ancient dress. The 
principal articles of female attire were 
the chiton and the himation, a skirt or 
tunic and a plaid we should call them. 
The chiton or skirt was long enough to 
reach from the neck to the feet, and wide 
enough to reach from finger-tip to finger¬ 
tip with the arms outstretched. It was 
sleeveless at first, but in later times had 
sleeves to the elbow. This garment was 
drawn to the waist by a girdle, and was 
fastened together over the shoulders by 







CLOTHING 


brooches. The lower border was orna¬ 
mented with colored embroidery. This 
garment was of linen or silk. The hima- 
tion was a long, wide, woolen plaid in 
a variety of colors. It was wound about 
the shoulders and waist variously. Some¬ 
times a fold was thrown over the head 
for a head dress. Sandals, a woolen pet¬ 
ticoat, a band about the chest, and possibly 
a cap with jewelry completed the costume 
of the Greek woman. Her husband’s chief 
articles of dress were a pair of sandals and 
a large, long himation. One of the Greek 
tragedians represents a wife as turning the 
laugh on her husband by hiding his plaid 
and sandals, rendering it impracticable for 
him to go abroad that day. Ordinarily, 
however, men wore, in addition, a short 
skirt-like garment suspended from the 
waist. In art, Vulcan, workingmen, and 
helots are represented as clad in this gar¬ 
ment only. 

The Roman woman wore clothing in imi¬ 
tation of her Grecian cousin. In this re¬ 
spect, the Greek woman was the Parisian 
of ancient times. Roman men wore a gar¬ 
ment corresponding to the Greek chiton. 
It reached from the neck to the middle 
of the thigh. It was known as a tunic. 
The himation of the Roman was an enor¬ 
mous affair, known as a toga. It was el¬ 
liptical in shape. Its length was three 
times, and its breadth twice the height of 
the wearer. In use it was folded length¬ 
wise, forming a semicircle about six feet 
wide and eighteen feet long. This clumsy 
garment was disposed in such a way as 
to drape the person from head to foot. 
The full toga was worn only by adults. 
The putting on of the boy’s first toga was 
an occasion of family ceremony and re¬ 
joicing. Both toga and tunic were colored 
and ornamented, according to the rank of 
the wearer. Purple was reserved for roy¬ 
alty. The tunic may be regarded as the 
forerunner of the modern shirt. The toga 
is the ancestor of the cloak, cape, and 
overcoat. 

It would be difficult to outline even in 
brief the evolution of modern clothing. 
The Pilgrims and other early settlers of 
New England and Canada did not know 
how to dress comfortably. The poet Whit¬ 


tier attributed his delicate health to colds 
caught in boyhood for want of warm un¬ 
derclothes. Comfortable underclothing is 
a product of the last half century. 

Changes in methods of making clothing 
are quite as marked as changes in styles. 
A century ago clothing was made only 
when ordered. A man gave an order to 
his hatter, was measured by his tailor and 
by his shoemaker. In the course of time 
his new clothes were ready. People of 
rank had tailors in their households. The 
idea of keeping readymade clothing in 
stock is recent. It grew out of the neces¬ 
sity of providing clothing in advance for 
soldiers and sailors. The soldier of the 
American Revolution went to the war clad 
in homespun from the backs of his own 
sheep. Part of the destitution at Valley 
Forge arose from the fact that no one had 
thought of making up shoes and suits in 
quantity, from which each soldier might 
select what fitted him. 

The earliest readymade clothing store in 
this country was established in 1830, it is 
said, at New Bedford, Massachusetts. It 
was patronized by sailors who begrudged 
the time requisite to be measured and wait 
for a suit to be made. The notion spread 
to Boston and to other points along the 
Atlantic. The first considerable Ameri¬ 
can trade in readymade clothing was built 
up with the mines of California and the 
region of the West, where a large popu¬ 
lation preceded the tailor. In 1861 the 
clothing world was astounded by a con¬ 
tract for $1,250,000 worth of uniforms for 
the United States army. The manufacture 
of clothing is now one of the world’s great 
industries. In the United States, count¬ 
ing boots and shoes, men’s clothing, wom¬ 
en’s clothing, furnishing goods, furs, gloves 
and mittens, hats and caps, hosiery, milli¬ 
nery, the annual value of the clothing man¬ 
ufactured runs over into the billions col¬ 
umn, and forms a good tenth of the total 
value of American manufactures. The 
percentage for Great Britain is yet larger. 
The chief American centers of the cloth¬ 
ing industry are New York, Chicago, Phil¬ 
adelphia, Baltimore, and Boston. The 
volume of readymade clothing for women 
is increasing rapidly. 



COSTUMES 

1 2 Egyptian. 3, 4. Greek. 5, 6. Roman. 7. Assyrian. 8, 0. Byzantine. 10. 11. Knights (13 

Cent 1 & l 9 French (15 Cent.). 13. Florentine (16 Cent.). 14. Venetian (16 Cent.). 15. German 
(16 Cent ) 16, 17. Austrian (16 Cent.). 18. French (16 Cent.). 10, 20. English (17 Cent.). 21, 
oo French (17 Cent.). 23, 24. German (17 Cent.). 




































CLOTHO—CLOUGH 


The invention of the sewing machine has 
proved a boon to tailors. One operative 
can now do the work of many former 
stitchers with thread and needle. Formerly 
the tailor measured his customer, cut the 
cloth, and made the suit with his own 
hands. Now the designer plans, the cut¬ 
ter piles his cloth in many layers and cuts 
a score of identical suits, overalls, or over¬ 
coats at once. A suit passes perhaps 
through the hands of a dozen operatives. 
Each does a certain part of the work 
only. Experience has taught manufactur¬ 
ers what sizes to make and how to meet 
the needs of different parts of the country. 
Clotho. See Fates. 

Cloud, a mass of small globules of wa¬ 
ter, or of ice and snow, suspended in the 
air. Clouds are formed by the evapora¬ 
tion of water from land and sea. There 
is a theory that the condensation of the 
water vapor, which is so fine as to be in¬ 
visible, into the larger globules of visible 
clouds, is due not only to a cooling of the 
air, but, in part at least, to the presence 
of dust particles and the repelling and at¬ 
tracting influence of electricity. Scientists 
have found that pure, dry air may be la¬ 
den with vapor and be cooled without con¬ 
densation but that, if at this point in the 
experiment, dust be injected without a 
change of temperature or the addition of 
more vapor, a mist forms at once. 

Clouds form and float at widely differ¬ 
ent heights. It is not difficult, especially 
when a storm is coming up, to note clouds 
at different altitudes moving in two or 
more entirely different and even opposite 
directions, showing that they are floating 
in different layers of air. The warmer the 
air, the more moisture it can carry. When 
air has all the moisture it can carry it 
is said to be saturated. If saturated air 
be warmed it can take up more moisture. 
If saturated air be cooled it must drop part 
of its moisture, and we have a shower, or 
a rain, or a dew. 

Clouds are not merely of great benefit, 
but are indispensable in carrying moisture 
from the place of their formation to the 
places where moisture is needed, and where 
shade is welcome. Shelley expresses this 
thought beautifully in his Cloud: 


I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers 

From the seas and the streams; 

I bear light shade for the leaves when laid 

In their noon day dreams. 

From my wings are shaken the dews that waken 

The sweet buds, every one 
When rocked to rest on their mother’s breast. 

As she dances about the sun. 

Clouds are classified according to their 
form and height. The chief three kinds 
are: 

1. The cirrus, a light, feathery cloud 
frequently seen streaming across the sky. 
Cirrus clouds move swiftly, and are high 
up, six to ten miles, in a wind-swept re¬ 
gion. 

2. The cumulus or fleecy cloud is 
piled up like a fleece of wool. The bases 
of cumulus clouds are flat and the upper 
parts are dome-shaped. They pile up and 
tumble about as if tossed by strong winds 
and take innumerable forms of mountains, 
castles, minarets, and towers. 

3. The nimbus, a dark, low, rain cloud. 
Rents in a nimbus frequently give magnif¬ 
icent views of the upper regions and other 
clouds. 

It would be a mistake to suppose that 
all clouds can be referred to these three 
forms; for clouds occur in all sorts of com¬ 
binations and intermediate forms, delight¬ 
ful to study. 

A cloud record is kept readily by a nu¬ 
merical scale of from 1 to 8. An entry of 
0 indicates a clear sky; 8 a dark, clouded 
sky in which no blue can be seen, and in 
which the sun cannot be located. 

The brilliant colors of the clouds, gray, 
purple, orange, yellow, olive, and pink, are 
due probably to the refraction of light by 
minute dust particles rather than to the 
globules of water. 

The height of clouds is found by two 
observers located at two ends of a given base 
line. Each observer measures the angle 
formed between the base and a line direct¬ 
ed toward a part of the cloud agreed upon. 
From the length of the base and the value 
of the two angles adjacent to the base, the 
altitude of the triangle, that is to say, 
the height of the cloud, is easily computed. 

See Dew; Frost; Hail; Rain. 

Clough, kluf, Arthur Hugh (1819- 
1861), an English poet. He was born in 


CLOVE—CLOVER 


Liverpool. He studied at Rugby and Ox¬ 
ford, and was much engaged with educa¬ 
tional work. He was a friend of Matthew 
Arnold who commemorated him in Tliyr- 
sis and Scholar Gypsy. Clough’s most 
noted poem is The Bothie of Tober-na- 
Vuolich. Clough belonged to the skep¬ 
tical school, of which Arnold and Swin¬ 
burne are other examples. It has been said 
of him that “he had neither the strength 
to believe nor the courage to disbelieve.” 
His poems are vigorous in tone, hopeful in 
spirit, and contain many noble thoughts 
intermingled with touches of humor and 
pathos. 

What voice did on my spirit fall, 
Peschiera, when thy bridge I crost? 

’T is better to have fought and lost 
Than never to have fought at all! 

As I sat at the Cafe I said to myself 
They may talk as they please about what they 
call pelf, 

They may sneer as they like about eating and 
drinking. 

But help it I cannot, I cannot help thinking, 

How pleasant it is to have money, heigh-ho, 
How pleasant it is to have money! 

Clove, the unopened flower bud of an 
aromatic tropical tree. The name is from 
the French clou, meaning a nail, suggested 
by the shape. The clove tree is an ever¬ 
green from ten to forty feet in height, na¬ 
tive to the Molucca or Spice Islands. Its 
cultivation has spread to the nearer parts 
of southeastern Asia, to eastern Africa, to 
Brazil, and to the West Indies. Cloves 
formed an important article of caravan 
traffic. When the passage around the 
south of Good Hope was discovered, Por¬ 
tugal got possession of the principal clove- 
producing islands and held them with in¬ 
human efforts to monopolize a money-mak¬ 
ing traffic. The cloves of commerce are 
the dried flower buds. The calyx is about 
half an inch long with a four-cleft border. 
The round knob in the center of the calyx is 
the dried corolla. If allowed to ripen, the 
fruit resembles an olive. Chambers states 
that the annual clove production of Zan¬ 
zibar on the east coast of Africa is 2,000,- 
000 pounds. Cloves are a favorite season¬ 
ing in cookery. A bit of clove inserted in 
the hollow of a troublesome tooth will 
frequently relieve the toothache. Oil of 


cloves is obtained by heating cloves in wa¬ 
ter. It is a remedy for nausea. See Spice; 
Magellan. 

Clover, an exceedingly valuable plant 
of the pea family. Latin trifolium, three¬ 
leaved. In architecture, a trifoliate or 
three-leaved pattern in the tracery of a 
church window or other part of church 
architecture was regarded as particularly 
appropriate to the doctrine of the trinity, or 
three in one nature of the Godhead. There 
is a superstition as old as the Romans 
that a serpent will on no account touch a 
leaf of the white clover. The shamrock, 
the national emblem of Ireland, corre¬ 
sponding to the rose of England and the 
thistle of Scotland, is usually considered 
to be a clover. 

There are some three hundred kinds of 
clovers; but farmers are interested in but 
three,—red, white, and alsike (pink) clo : 
ver. White clover is the special delight 
of bees. It is valuable on worn out lands, 
which it has a faculty of occupying and en¬ 
riching. It is not a desirable pasture plant. 
Red clover is one of the most valuable 
plants on a farm. It makes excellent pas¬ 
ture and fine hay. Its roots penetrating 
deep into the soil absorb valuable food 
materials from the substratum. More than 
this, the nodules occurring on the roots 
have been found to be colonies of bacteria 
which have the property of absorbing the 
free nitrogen from the air in the soil and 
working it over into the richest kind of 
plant food. Clover then not only does 
not draw from the soil, as corn and wheat 
do, but a crop of clover actually makes the 
soil richer. If a growing crop of clover 
be turned under with a plow, the soil is en¬ 
riched still more. A farm is never impov¬ 
erished by growing clover. There is pro¬ 
priety, after all, in saying of one in 
comfortable circumstances, “He lives in 
clover.” An interesting and valuable fact 
relating to clover raising, is the relation of 
the bumble-bee to seed production. It is 
the only insect that has a proboscis adapted 
to reaching the deep-seated nectar cup of 
the red clover. In its efforts to secure this 
nectar it comes in contact with the pollen 
and thus effects the cross fertilization with¬ 
out which seed production is impossible. 



Cirrus 



Strato-cumulus 



Cumulo-nimbus 



Cirro-stratus 



Cumulus 



Nimbus 

Copyright 1912, Welles Bros. Pub. Co, 


CLOUDS 

























. 











































































































. 

' 































■ 

























Red clover. 


Soy bean. 



Roots of red clover showing noduleb. 


Roots of soy bean, showing noduleg* 


CLOVER AND ITS RELATIVE, THE SOY BEAN. 











CLOVIS—CLUB 


Red clover will yield two crops in fa¬ 
vorable seasons. It is considered good 
farming to take the first crop and plow 
the second under. For pasture, as well as 
hay, a mixture of timothy and red clover 
is ideal. A ton of red clover well cured 
contains more nourishment than an equal 
amount of the best timothy. Fed to cows 
clover hay increases the flow of milk. 
The states and provinces bordering on the 
Great Lakes are the red clover region of 
North America. Toledo is the greatest 
clover seed market. An acre produces 
from three to eight bushels of seed. A 
bushel contains from 12,000,000 to 25,- 
000,000 seeds. From eight to fifteen 
pounds are required to sow an acre. A 
variety of red clover is known as mammoth 
clover. 

Alsike clover is halfway in appearance 
and value and habits between white clover 
and red. Sweet clover is a fragrant, white- 
blossomed upright plant, allied more near¬ 
ly to alfalfa. 

See Alfalfa; Pea; Bean. 

Clovis (465-511), king of the Franks. 
His chief capital was Soissons. He mar¬ 
ried Clothilde, a Burgundian princess, who 
converted him from a heathen plunderer of 
churches into an upholder of the Church of 
Rome. His soldiers having borne away 
a vase of great size and beauty from a 
church, Clovis promised to restore it if 
it fell to him in the distribution of booty. 
When the booty was being distributed, 
Clovis asked for the vase in addition to 
his regular share. His soldiers could not 
very well refuse a request from their com¬ 
mander ; but one rough old fellow raised 
his battleax and dashed the beautiful vase 
to fragments, crying that the king should 
have no more than his rightful share. 
Afterward, the story goes, at an inspection 
of his army, Clovis found fault with the 
condition of the armor of the soldier who 
had so offended, and clove him through 
the head. This is the tale of the vase of 
Soissons. Another tale runs to the ef¬ 
fect that when hard pressed in battle with 
the Alemanni, Clovis made a vow that, 
if Clothilde’s God would help him win 
the battle, he would desert his heathen gods 
for Christianity. The enemy fled; Clovis 


and 2,000 of his soldiers were baptized 
and received into the church by the Bish¬ 
op of Rheims. The conversion of Clovis 
proved of great service to him in a political 
way, and brought the greater part of France 
under his banner. The Franks were the 
first important Teutonic people to adopt 
the orthodox form of Christianity. The 
other early converts (Goths, Burgundians, 
Lombards, and Vandals) had accepted the 
Arian form. The Franks afterward con¬ 
quered the Burgundians, part of the Gothic 
kingdom, and the Lombards in Italy, and 
brought all these peoples into the Roman 
communion. 

Club, an association formed usually 
for some social, literary, or political pur¬ 
pose. It is quite probable that there were 
clubs in Rome. Something of the sort ap¬ 
pears to have been known among the offi¬ 
cers of Roman garrisons stationed at a dis¬ 
tance from the home city. London may be 
regarded, however, as the original home of 
the club. In its earliest form, the club 
existed in connection with some coffeehouse 
or tavern. Meetings were held usually in a 
large room of the establishment. Refresh¬ 
ments were served. Such organizations sim¬ 
ply gathered around a dining table, at 
which the members presented themselves at 
a given hour, combining the taking of a 
regular meal with social intercourse. 

In most clubs, it is understood that mem¬ 
bers are admitted by a ballot. A rejected 
candidate is said to have been “black¬ 
balled.” Some clubs admit no visitors. 
The members of other clubs are permitted 
to invite guests. One of the earliest clubs 
of any note was formed in the seventeenth 
century at the Mermaid Tavern. Shakes¬ 
peare, Beaumont, Fletcher, Sir Walter 
Raleigh, Donne, and Selden were members. 
The Kit-Cat Club of Queen Anne’s reign 
was a Whig club. Its membership included 
Steele, Addison, Congreve, Robert Wal¬ 
pole, and many of the nobility, including 
the Duke of Marlborough. A rival Tory 
organization was known as the Beefsteak 
Club. The history of London clubs in¬ 
cludes many curious nancies, such as the 
Unfortunate Club; the Lying Club, whose 
members were required to refrain from 
speaking the truth unless the president gave 


CLUB—COAL 


express permission; the Ugly Club; the 
Surly Club; and the Split-farthing Club. 
The Literary Club, to which Dr. Samuel 
Johnson belonged, enrolled Sir Joshua 
Reynolds, Edmund Burke, Oliver Gold¬ 
smith, and Edward Gibbon. It is still in 
existence. As expressive of the qualities 
desirable in a member, Dr. Johnson coined 
the expression a “clubbable man.” 

There are now in London several scores 
of clubs with a total membership, possibly, 
of 100,000. One of the most noted is the 
Carleton Club, established by the Duke of 
Wellington. It occupies a palatial build¬ 
ing, and is considered the headquarters of 
the Conservative party. It has about 1,600 
members. The Reform Club is considered 
the headquarters of the Liberal party. 
Other London clubs are the Athenaeum, the 
Travelers, the Army and Navy, etc. 

There are two or three hundred clubs 
in the United States. The most noted, pos¬ 
sibly, is the Union League Club of New 
York. The alumni of the larger universities 
have established numerous clubs. A Yale 
club, a Harvard club, a Princeton club, 
etc., may be found in almost any large 
city. New York, however, is the club cen¬ 
ter of the United States. The Yacht Club 
has over 1,000 members; the Army and 
Navy, 1,200. The Knickerbocker Club and 
the Authors’ Club are of a literary nature. 
The Press Club is composed of newspa¬ 
per men. The Grolier Club encourages re¬ 
prints in fine binding of rare old books. 
The University Club of Chicago is a not¬ 
able organization, and occupies a striking 
building finished handsomely in oak. 
Nearly every city of importance in the 
Union has a commercial club, with a mem¬ 
bership representing nearly every line of 
mental activity. Such clubs usually have 
commodious quarters, with conveniences for 
dining, and for playing games, a reading 
room, an assembly room, etc. Matters of im¬ 
portance to the city at large are taken up 
and discussed. Many civic reforms and en¬ 
terprises are due to the various clubs of 
this nature. On the presentation of the 
regulation card, most commercial clubs ex¬ 
tend the freedom of their quarters to the 
members of corresponding organizations in 
other cities. 


Clyde, the chief river of Scotland. It 
rises in Lanarkshire and Dumfries, and 
flows westward into the Irish Sea. The 
river is about eighty miles in length. In 
its upper course it makes three distinct 
leaps ere it leaves the hills. The mouth is 
a broad estuary or firth. The channel has 
been dredged to permit large steamers to 
ascend as far as Glasgow. An outgoing 
steamer takes cargo at the wharves of Glas¬ 
gow, but usually lies to at Greenock near 
the mouth of the river for passengers from 
the city to join it by rail. The Firth of 
Clyde is full of booms of timber from Nor¬ 
way. The lofty rock and castle of Dum¬ 
barton keep watch over a noble scene. Ships 
innumerable are passing up and down this 
busy stream. See Glasgow. 

Clytemnestra, kli-tem-nes'tra, in Greek 
legend, the wife of Agamemnon, king of 
Mycenae, and mother of Orestes. While 
her husband was absent at the Trojan War, 
Clytemnestra bestowed her favors upon 
Aegisthus, and the two succeeded in put¬ 
ting the husband to death after his return. 
After seven years Orestes avenged his fa¬ 
ther’s death by slaying both Clytemnestra 
and Aegisthus. Clytemnestra was sister to 
Helen of Troy, and to Castor and Pollux. 
See Agamemnon ; Helen ; Castor and 
Pollux. 

Clytie, or Clytia, in Greek mythology, 
an ocean nymph. She became enamored 
of Helios, the sun god. Her affection was 
not returned and she pined away in conse¬ 
quence. For nine days she sat on the cold 
ground and mourned, but ever with her 
face turned toward the sun. At last the 
gods pitied her and allowed her to be trans¬ 
formed into a flower. Her feet grew down¬ 
ward into the ground and became roots; 
her body and arms became the plant, and 
her pretty face became a blossom, which 
turns always toward the sun. Thence¬ 
forth she was called the heliotrope, which 
means “sun-turning.” 

Coach. See Carriage ; Car ; Stage ; 
Cab. 

Coal, a well known combustible miner¬ 
al, used as a fuel. It varies in color from 
brown to black. It is brittle, it cannot be 
melted, and is not subject to decay. It is 
composed essentially of carbon, but con- 


COAL 


tains from five to six per cent of earthy 
matter. This is the part that is left be¬ 
hind in ash. Sulphur is found in almost 
all coal. 

Coal is supposed to be derived from a 
vast growth of vegetation that accumulated 
in oceanic swamps, chiefly in a former era 
of rain and heat known as the carbonifer¬ 
ous age. An intensely tropical climate 
caused a rank and rapid growth of tree¬ 
like rushes, now extinct, whose gigantic 
trunks, mingled with ferns and other plants, 
covered tropical areas to a great depth. 
A sinking of the earth’s crust, followed 
by a deposit of soil, brought down by such 
floods as w T e have no conception of today, 
buried the vegetable matter of the old 
swamps beneath a mass of mud, a mile 
deep perhaps. Intense heat from the in¬ 
terior of the earth and pressure from above 
turned the plants themselves into a layer 
or vein of coal. Sometimes a new swamp 
of rank vegetation appeared above the old 
one; or in this way several layers of coal 
may have been formed, one above the other, 
with strata of stone intervening. 

The nearest approach to coal formation 
nowadays are the peat beds in which veg¬ 
etable fiber is accumulating from year to 
year. Should any considerable thickness 
of peat ever be covered with soil and sub¬ 
jected to great pressure and heat, we might 
expect it to become a coal measure. 

Lignite is a form of coal that is but im¬ 
perfectly converted. Traces of woody 
growth, as in the lignites of North Dakota 
and Texas, are still visible. Attempts to 
grind these coals and compress them into 
more solid bricks for general consumption 
have been made with entire success, save 
as to expense. 

Hard coal, or anthracite, is coal that has 
been buried beneath great masses of earth, 
and hence has been subjected to such pres¬ 
sure and heat as to drive off the greatest 
possible percentage of matter that can be 
converted into vapors or gases, and leave 
a high percentage of pure carbon. The 
great hard coal bed of the world is that 
of Pennsylvania. It underlies an area 125 
miles long by 35 miles wide. During the 
past fifty years 4,000,000,000 tons have 
been taken out. It is estimated that 15,- 


000,000,000 tons remain. It will last a 
hundred years at the present rate of min¬ 
ing. About forty per cent is wasted need¬ 
lessly in dust and in fragments left in the 
debris. 

Soft coal or bituminous coal contains 
gaseous materials that have not been driven 
out. All grades of coal from soft to hard 
are to be found. The softer the coal, the 
more it swells in burning, and the denser 
the black smoke it gives off. The more 
recently coal has been formed, the softer 
it is likely to be. 

Coal was not burned in the ancient 
world. We hear of the first in England 
about 852. American coal was mentioned 
by Father Hennepin who found it in the 
bluffs of the Illinois River near La Salle 
in 1673-80. It is said that the settlers 
of Pennsylvania did not know any use to 
which they could put the black stone that 
cropped out of the cliffs along their 
streams. Even after they had learned that 
it could be burned, and how to burn it, 
it was a long time before anyone thought 
of selling it. Each farmer drove up to a 
bank anywhere and shoveled in as much 
of the stuff as he cared to haul away. It 
was not until a way of getting it to Phila¬ 
delphia and New York was opened up that 
coal began to have a money value. 

At the present time the coal of the 
United States is spoken of as found in cer¬ 
tain areas or districts, as the Rhode Island 
district; the Appalachian, extending from 
Pennsylvania to Alabama; the Michigan; 
the Illinois, including part of Indiana and 
Kentucky; an ill defined prairie district 
including localities from North Dakota to 
Texas; the Rocky Mountain area; and the 
states of the Pacific coast. Many of our 
coals, especially the lignites, belong to an 
age subsequent to that known as the car¬ 
boniferous. 

Although increasing quantities are pro¬ 
duced in Nova Scotia, Vancouver Island, 
China, India, Australia, New Zealand, 
Orange Free State, and Brazil, Europe and 
the United States now produce practically 
all the coal of the world. Large fields in 
Alaska and adjacent parts of Canada may 
be expected to add to the world’s output. 
More than half of the world’s miners are 


COAL—COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY 


engaged in mining coal. The world’s pro¬ 
duction of coal averages about as follows : 


Countries. 

United States 
United Kingdom . .. . 

Germany . 

Austria-Hungary 

France . 

Belgium . 

Russia. 

Japan and China 

Australasia. 

India . 

Canada . 

Spain . 

Sweden . 

South Africa . 

Italy . 

All other countries. . . 


Coal Area in 

Square Miles. Long Tons. 

194,000 318,275,920 

9,000 236,147,125 

3,600 169,448,272 

. 40,650,000 

1,800 34,502,289 

500 23,380,025 

27,000 18,600,000 

200,000 13,600,000 

. 8,285,849 

35,000 7,682,319 

. 6,814,755 

500 2,800,000 

. 320,984 

. 3,015,000 

. 332,000 

. 4,250,000 


Total, partly estim’d 471,800 866,104,538 

An important use of coal is that for 
heating. Locomotives and stationary steam 
engines in manufactories requiring steam 
power consume enormous quantities. Il¬ 
luminating gas is made from coal. Elec¬ 
tric lights are in circuit with the power 
house in which electricity is generated, usu¬ 
ally by burning coal. The smelting of iron 
is accomplished by means of coal. The 
various forms of iron, wrought, cast, and 
steel, are obtained from pig iron by the aid 
of coal. 

Of these four uses, heating, lighting, 
smelting, and producing power, the last 
named is the most conspicuous. If coal 
were to give out suddenly, nine-tenths of 
the world’s industries would stop until 
new methods of transportation and manu¬ 
facturing could be devised. The produc¬ 
tion of iron would cease. Cities would 
be plunged into darkness. Trains would 
come to a standstill. The wheels of fac¬ 
tories would stop. Surplus crops would 
be worthless—no way of carrying them. 
People would starve for want of a way to 
get food to them. Northern people would 
perish for want of a way to get fuel to 
them. Wood, water power, and oil would 
help us out, and doubtless a substitute for 
coal would be found; but a large part of 
the earth’s surface would be abandoned 
temporarily, and civilization would be set 
back by the disaster. At the present rate 
of waste and consumption the known sup¬ 


ply will last about 450 years. No doubt 
coal will give out; but in the meantime 
the inventive genius of mankind will have 
devised means of harnessing the wind, 
waves, and sunlight to supply heat and do 
our -work. 


A German authority writing in 1908 said 
the world has coal enough to last at least 
2,000 years. His estimate in tons was as fol¬ 


lows : 

Germany . 

United Kingdom 

Belgium . 

France . 

Austria . 

Russia. 

North America 
Asia. 


... .280,000,000,000 
... .193,000,000,000 
.... 23,000,000,000 
.... 19,000,000,000 
.... 17,000,000,000 
.... 40,000,000,000 
. .. .681,000,000,000 
Vast, but unknown 


Coal Tar, a substance obtained in the 
manufacture of illuminating gas. It dis¬ 
tills over with the gas and ammonia, but 
settles in the water which absorbs the am¬ 
monia, as a black, sticky mass, with a 
strong, unpleasant odor. It used to be re¬ 
garded as of little value and was often not 
saved at all, but is now one of the sources 
of profit in the gas-making industry. 
Chemically it is a mixture of a great num¬ 
ber of compounds, and by repeated distilla¬ 
tions yields many valuable products, 
among which are benzene, creosote, car¬ 
bolic acid, and naphtha. The coal-tar dyes, 
such as the series of aniline colors, which 
have so largely displaced vegetable color¬ 
ing matter, are secondary products of coal 
tar. See Dyestuffs. 

Coast and Geodetic Survey, a bureau 
of the United States Treasury Department. 
The bureau was authorized in 1807 during 
the presidency of Thomas Jefferson. The 
survey was charged with gathering and dis¬ 
seminating information of importance to 
navigation. In 1878 the scope of the bu¬ 
reau was enlarged to include a scientific 
inland survey as well. The original coast 
line of the United States has been in¬ 
creased by the acquisition of Alaska and 
island possessions, until the total, measur¬ 
ing the general trend only, is upward of 
25,000 miles. The actual shore line, in¬ 
cluding harbors and inlets, is several times 
as great. 

In the earlier stages of the survey, the 
work was divided between officers of the 































COAST DEFENSE—COBLENZ 


army and the navy, but the organization 
is now independent. A head office is main¬ 
tained in Washington, with sub-offices in 
San Francisco, Seattle, Honolulu, and 
Manila. The field force consists of about 
seventy-five experts. The office at Wash¬ 
ington includes about 150 clerks, engrav¬ 
ers, draftsmen, instrument makers, print¬ 
ers, and minor employes. The survey owns 
a dozen steamers, several schooners, and 
a large number of launches. 

A system of triangles has been surveyed 
along the coast from Maine to the Gulf. 
A second chain of triangles is under sur¬ 
vey, following the 98th meridian from 
North Dakota to Mexico. Still a third 
system of triangles follows the thirty-ninth 
parallel from New Jersey and California, 
passing through thirteen states, and afford¬ 
ing an accurate basis for local surveys. 
Permanent posts are set. As fast as the 
work is completed geodetic charts are is¬ 
sued. The establishment of boundaries be¬ 
tween the different states is recognized as 
a part of the legitimate work of the survey. 

The survey has published a vast amount 
of detailed and exact information regard¬ 
ing latitude and longitude, tides, currents, 
deep sea soundings, harbors, and channels. 
Pilots, captains, and naval officers provide 
themselves with charts issued by the sur¬ 
vey. A series of levels established in the 
eastern part of the country is to be ex¬ 
tended to the Pacific coast. These levels 
give cities and road makers an accurate 
basis for the level of ditches, sidewalks, 
sewers, water mains, and streets. 

Coast Defense. See Fort. 

Cobalt, a metal resembling silver in ap¬ 
pearance ; but with a slight trace of red. 
It is brittle and highly magnetic. It is 
harder than iron, but melts more easily 
and is a trifle heavier. Cobalt occurs in 
nature almost always in company with nick¬ 
el, and is produced with it. Compounds of 
cobalt, called cobalt salts, have a peculiar 
way of changing color. When dry they are 
blue, and when wet they are red. Ink made 
of a cobalt salt is accordingly red, and pro¬ 
duces red writing; but if the writing be 
dried before a fire until it loses its mois¬ 
ture, the writing turns blue. Exposure to 
vapor brings back a red color. If the ink 


be made very weak the red will not show, 
but heat will develop the blue. In this 
way secret correspondence has not infre¬ 
quently been carried on. A letter in ordi¬ 
nary ink is sent with a second letter in 
invisible ink written between lines. Serv¬ 
ants and spies not in the secret were sat¬ 
isfied with reading the letter written in 
black ink; while that written in sympathet¬ 
ic was unsuspected, save by the person for 
whom it was intended. Cobalt is a fast 
mineral dye, giving its name to cobalt blue. 
It is used in the manufacture of stained 
glass, paints, colored porcelain, etc. Co¬ 
balt blue is unrivaled for beauty and in¬ 
tensity. Large deposits of cobalt have re¬ 
cently been discovered in Canada. The 
output for 1909 was 48,000 tons, valued 
at $18,700,000. See Ink. 

Cobden, Richard (1804-1865), an 
English statesman. He received a limited 
education, but acquired commercial expe¬ 
rience in a warehouse in London, and, with 
the help of friends, founded a successful 
manufactory of cotton cloth in Manches¬ 
ter. Later, he was able to travel, both on 
the continent and in the United States. He 
began writing pamphlets on political con¬ 
ditions, and took an active part in the anti¬ 
corn law agitation. In 1841 he entered 
Parliament, where he became known as 
the “apostle of free trade.” He was not 
only foremost in the repeal of the corn 
laws, but may be regarded as the states¬ 
man to whom, above all others, England 
owes her free trade policy. His services 
in Parliament led to the neglect of his own 
business. He became involved in difficul¬ 
ties; but friends raised a purse of $350,- 
000 and presented it to him, so great was 
their appreciation of the value of his serv¬ 
ices in Parliament. He was offered numer¬ 
ous honors, including membership in the 
British cabinet and a baronetcy, all of 
which he persistently refused, preferring to 
represent the interests of the people 
throughout, as he understood them. Free 
trade clubs the world over, bear his name. 
See Bright, John; Corn Laws. 

Coblenz, or Koblenz, a city of Prus¬ 
sia. It is situated on a point of land 
formed by the junction of the Moselle and 
the Rhine. Coblenz is still a walled city. 


COBOLD—COCHINEAL 


It is fortified by outposts. Ehrenbreit- 
stein on the east bank of the Rhine is the 
most strongly fortified place in Germany. 
The city is well supplied with bridges. 
A stone bridge of fourteen arches erected 
in 1344 crosses the Moselle. There are 
three bridges across the Rhine; the Rhen¬ 
ish bridge, an iron structure of three 
arches; a railway bridge, a brick structure, 
also of three arches; and the famous Bridge 
of Boats, the latter being a level bridge 
of pontoon construction. 

The situation of Coblenz is picturesque 
beyond description, but the town itself is 
prosy enough. If we except the church 
St. Castor consecrated in 1208, a Roman¬ 
esque basilica with four towers, there are no 
buildings of national reputation. There 
are many points of minor interest, how¬ 
ever. The writing table of Frederick the 
Great, and many articles formerly belong¬ 
ing to the electors of Treves, the royal 
family of Baden, are shown in the Elec¬ 
toral Hall. A fountain erected by a 
French prefect bears the inscription, in 
French, of course, “The year 1812, mem¬ 
orable for the campaign against the Rus¬ 
sians.” The Russian general, St. Priest, 
added the ironical words, “Seen and ap¬ 
proved by us. The Russian governor of 
the village of Coblenz, January 1, 1814.” 

Coblenz is headquarters for the wines 
of the Moselle and the Rhine. A mag¬ 
nificent park and a boulevard extend along 
the Rhine above the city. The old palace 
of the elector of Treves is now a summer 
residence of the emperor and his family. 
The population for 1910 was 56,487. 

See Ehrenbreitstein ; Moselle. 

Cobold, or Kobold, ko'bold, a domes¬ 
tic- spirit in northern mythology. Accord¬ 
ing to the Edda, Odin formed the dwarfs 
from dust. They were of two sorts. The 
gnomes occupy deep caverns. The cobolds 
are house spirits and, if kindly treated, nes¬ 
tle beside the hearth and are a protection to 
the home. See Edda. 

Cobra, a venomous Indian serpent of 
the viper family. The cobra belongs to 
the class of hooded snakes. It is marked 
on the back of the neck with a figure re¬ 
sembling a pair of spectacles. It is some¬ 
times called the “spectacled snake.” It is 


a slender, active, deadly animal, about four 
feet long, infesting footpaths and copses. 
In the rainy season it takes refuge under the 
huts of the people. It makes its way into 
thatched roofs. It strikes without provo¬ 
cation and without warning. There is no 
certain antidote for its venom. As the 
peasants of India go barefooted, it is not 
strange that from 10,000 to 20,000 deaths 
from the bite of the cobra are reported an¬ 
nually. The government of India offers a 
standing bounty for its extirpation. Snake 
charmers go about enticing these dread 
serpents from their holes with tame snakes 
and music; then kill them. The cobra 
breeds rapidly; fifteen to twenty eggs are 
deposited in litter anywhere, and in a few 
days there are as many little cobras. The 
mongoose is the cobra’s deadly foe. Kip¬ 
ling’s Second Jungle Book describes a spir¬ 
ited contest between Rikki-tikki-tavi, the 
mongoose, and the venomous cobras. See 
Asp. 

Cobweb. # See Spider. 

Coca, a shrub growing in Peru and 
Bolivia. The leaves, sprinkled with lime, 
are chewed by 10,000,000 Indians of these 
countries and adjacent parts of Brazil. 
Coca lessens the pangs of hunger, dilates 
the pupil of the eye, and gives immediate 
quickness of step. Mountain climbers 
claim that it prevents shortness of breath. 
In some respects the qualities of the leaf 
resemble those of opium. Its extensive 
use is parallel to that of opium, betel, and 
tobacco by other people. Cocaine, a pow¬ 
erful drug obtained from the leaves, is well 
known to medical science. It is adminis¬ 
tered to lessen pain and is injected by sur¬ 
geons to produce local numbness during 
an operation. See Tobacco; Betel. 

Cocaine. See Coca. 

Cochineal, koch-i-nel', an insect valu¬ 
able as a source of dye stuff. It feeds on 
a branching, almost tree-like, kind of cac¬ 
tus, plantations of which have been estab¬ 
lished for the purpose in Mexico, Peru, 
some parts of the West Indies, and, of late, 
in the Canary Islands, parts of Spain, Al¬ 
giers, and Java. Cochineal dyes were 
known to the Mexicans before the invasion 
of that country by white men. The ladies 
of Queen Isabella’s court begged Cortez 


COCKCHAFER—COCKAYNE, LAND OF 


to bring them a little of the beautiful dye. 
The cochineal industry has risen to mil¬ 
lions of pounds of insects annually—far 
beyond the possibilities of the irregular 
supply formerly brought in by Indians. 

The first step is the establishment of a 
field of cacti. This may be done by seed, 
by seedlings from a nursery, or best by 
cuttings, or lobes, planted where they are 
to grow. The field is ready in a year or 
two. A supply of insects with their eggs 
is then placed on each plant, and the young 
are left to grow up. The insect belongs 
to what Comstock calls mealy bugs. It 
is related also to the insect that produces 
shellac, and to various scale insects that 
have become orchard and field pests. The 
full grown male has a pair of wings and 
two pairs of eyes, but no way of seizing 
food. The female is a great eater, but has 
no wings or other means of making her 
escape. There are perhaps 150 females to 
one male; and it is the female heavy with 
eggs that is valuable. They are brushed 
off the cactus with soft brushes into bags, 
and are killed at once by dipping in hot 
water or being put into an oven. A work¬ 
man gathers about two ounces a day. The 
insect is of a reddish brown, covered with 
a white, mealy powder, and is of the size 
of a small split pea. Seventy thousand are 
required to weigh a pound. Cochineal 
dye is produced by steeping the insects. 
It is scarlet and carmine, of great bril¬ 
liancy. Cochineal makes a fine red ink 
as well. 

Cockchafer, a common name for the 
European May beetle or May bug, which 
closely resembles the June bug of the 
United States. The cockchafer is an inch 
long and black in color. It is often a 
troublesome pest in Europe. Kingsley’s 
Standard Natural History gives an inter¬ 
esting account of this beetle and the injury 
it wrought in France some years ago. The 
story shows the characteristics and habits 
of the insect. In the spring of 1865 May 
beetles appeared in large numbers, entirely 
stripping many oaks and other trees of 
their leaves. They lived, as is usual, only 
a few days, but the larvae hatched from 
them wrought terrible havoc among vege¬ 
tables in the spring of 1866. It was esti¬ 


mated that $5,000,000 worth of vegetables 
was destroyed by them along the lower 
Seine. During the winter of 1866 and 67 
the larvae, which require several years for 
metamorphosis, lived 16 inches below the 
surface of the ground where they must 
have been frozen, and thawed out again 
in the spring. In June of 1867 still a foot 
below ground, they entered the pupa stage 
from which they emerged as adult beetles 
in the fall of that year, to appear at the 
surface of the ground in April and May of 
1868. 

Cock Lane Ghost, the name given to 
the imagined cause of certain knockings 
which were heard in the house of a Mr. 
Parsons at No. 33 Cock Lane, Clerken- 
well, London, in 1762. A “luminous fig¬ 
ure” was said to have been seen in the 
same house. Dr. Johnson wrote an ac¬ 
count of the supposed phenomena for the 
Gentleman’s Magazine. In consequence 
Johnson was severely attacked for his cre¬ 
dulity in a poem entitled, The Ghost, by 
Churchill. It was decided that the strange 
occurrences had been produced purposely 
by Mr. Parsons and his little girl. Mr. 
Parsons was therefore pilloried. The ex¬ 
pression “Cock Lane Ghost,” has come to 
be used to designate any tale of fright or 
credulity that is purely imaginary. 
Cockatoo. See Parrot. 

Cockatrice. See Basilisk. 

Cockayne, The Land of, or Cock¬ 
aigne, kok-an', a satirical poem, supposed 
to have been written by Michael of Kil¬ 
dare during the thirteenth century. It has 
been said that it is “probably the earliest 
specimen of modern English poetry which 
we possess.” There is also an old French 
poem of the same title. The word Cock¬ 
ayne, although of uncertain origin, is prob¬ 
ably from an old French word signifying 
abundance. Cockayne was an imaginary. 
land of idleness and plenty. “The houses 
were built of cake and barley sugar; the 
streets paved with pastry; roast geese went 
slowly down the streets inviting the pass¬ 
ers-by to eat them; buttered larks fell in 
profusion; and the rivers ran wine.” It 
was doubtless intended to ridicule the sto¬ 
ries of Avalon, the mythical island in the 
west. In the sixteenth century the word 


COCKFIGHTING—COCKLEBUR 


Lubberland was used with the same signifi¬ 
cance. The term Land of Cockaigne has 
been derisively applied to both London and 
Paris. See Avalon. 

Cockfighting, an ancient sport, pre¬ 
sumably of eastern origin. The natural 
pugnacity of two male birds is taken ad¬ 
vantage of to afford amusement to the spec¬ 
tators. While the term is applied particu¬ 
larly to fighting between two males of the 
domestic fowl, the natives of the Indies pit 
the males of the bulbul or eastern nightin¬ 
gale against each other, and the ancients 
appear to have pitted quails and partridges. 
The breed of fowls noted for fighting is a 
spare, tough, pugnacious variety of chickens 
known as gamefowls and the males as game¬ 
cocks. They weigh from four to five 
pounds. They have strong spurs which are 
frequently reinforced with steel or silver 
prongs fastened to the leg with straps. In 
fighting the cocks are set head to head on a 
plot of turf, called a pit, and are allowed 
to fight without interference. A contest be¬ 
tween two well matched birds is a cruel 
and bloody one. They often fight until 
completely exhausted. More frequently, 
however, the overpowered bird puts out for 
a place of safety, while the other, if he has 
the strength left, celebrates his victory by 
a flap of the wings and a crow of triumph. 
Although under the ban and frequently 
forbidden by law; cockfighting still has its 
votaries, both in England and America. It 
is a favorite form of amusement through¬ 
out the Spanish-American countries. In 
the Philippines each village has its cockpit 
and each villager his gamecock. Their 
respective ancestry and qualities are a sta¬ 
ple article of village talk. A recent writ¬ 
er states that when the thatched hut of a 
native takes fire, as so combustible an af¬ 
fair is pretty sure to do, wife and children 
get out the best way they can. His first 
care is the safety of the coop in which 
his gamebird is confined. This does not 
seem so strange when we remember that 
a horseman’s first thought is for his racer 
when his barn takes fire. 

Although not mentioned by Goldsmith in 
his enumeration of former joys and sports 
in the Deserted Village , cockfighting was 
at one time in such high esteem in England 


that the village schoolmaster had certain 
duties in connection with the sport for 
which he was entitled to fees. Opie Reed’s 
Hie Jucklins gives an interesting picture of 
a southern gentleman much attached to the 
practice of cockfighting. 

Cockle, a word of many meanings, most 
of which the dictionary defines sufficiently. 

In zoology cockle is the name of a genus 
of bivalve mollusks comprising many spe¬ 
cies. They are widely distributed, form¬ 
ing an article of diet along the coasts of 
almost every country of the world. The 
two valves or shells are almost exactly 
alike, very closely locked together, and 
showing decided, often spiny, ridges run¬ 
ning from hinge to edge. The cockle’s 
most interesting characteristic is a large, 
fleshy, elastic foot by means of which it 
propels itself in a series of awkward leaps. 
It can also bury itself in muddy sand or 
emerge therefrom with great ease. 

The gathering of cockles gives employ¬ 
ment to many people in certain parts of 
Great Britain. In some places these mol¬ 
lusks are reared in “cockle gardens,” and 
such cockles are said to excel in flavor. 

In botany the cockle or corn-cockle is 
a plant belonging to the pink family. It 
is a native of Europe and western Asia but 
now is to be found in almost all parts of 
the world. It grows to a height of from 
one to three feet and bears a large purple 
blossom. It is found in grain fields and 
waste places, and becomes often a trouble¬ 
some weed, as the seed must be screened 
from grain, for which process a special 
sieve is required. The best way to combat 
it is to sow grain which is entirely free 
from the seed of cockle. 

Cocklebur, a weed which has proved 
very troublesome on cattle and sheep 
ranges. The plant belongs to the family 
of composites and was introduced into this 
country from Europe. The burs are hard 
and covered with hooked prickles. These 
prickles are not only annoying to animals, 
but if once entangled in the wool of sheep 
it is almost impossible to get them out. As 
the plant dies down to the ground each 
autumn its growth may be controlled by 
destroying all plants yearly before the seed 
ripens. 


COCKNEY—COCOA 


Cockney, a nickname for a native of 
London. The origin of the word is un¬ 
known. One suggestion is that cockney is 
related to coquina, a kitchen, in the sense 
of a hanger-on for broken victuals. An¬ 
other equally wise suggestion connects the 
term with cock’s egg—a small misshapen 
egg. A genuine cockney must be born 
within hearing of Bowbells,—that is with¬ 
in the city. The term is used rather in de¬ 
rision, as cockney conceit, cockney speech. 

Cockney Poets, or Cockney School, 
a name given to a coterie of writers, in¬ 
cluding Shelley, Keats, Leigh Hunt, and 
Hazlitt. The term was first applied to 
these writers by Lockhart in Blackwood’s 
Magazine. It suggested effeminacy, and 
was applied in derision. 

Cockroach, a night insect allied to 
crickets and grasshoppers. The body is 
flat and oval when seen from above. The 
insect runs rapidly instead of jumping. 
Some species are wingless. Our native 
cockroaches are out-of-doors insects, pre¬ 
ferring to live in fields and forests. Dur¬ 
ing the day they conceal themselves under 
sticks and stones. The pale brown Croton 
bug or cockroach that hides about water- 
pipes and infests pantries is an immigrant 
from Asia. It is thought to have reached 
Europe and America in ships’ cargoes. It 
is fond of flour and meal. It dreads pow¬ 
dered borax. It may be banished easily by 
the free use of insect powder. 

Cocoa, ko'ko, Cacao, or Coco, the 
seeds of a tropical tree. By right the name 
should be spelled cacao, which would also 
avoid confusion with cocoa-nut, a seed as 
large as a child’s head, while cacao or co¬ 
coa seeds, or beans as they are frequently 
called, are more like shelled almonds. Co¬ 
coa must be distinguished also from coca. 
Several species of small trees produce cocoa 
beans. Our supply comes chiefly from one 
of them. It grows in Portuguese Africa, 
in tropical America, and the West Indies. 

The tree which produces cocoa beans 
branches at the height of a man’s head, 
and bears cucumber-shaped pods several 
inches in length with a thick, warty rind. 
The pod contains a sweetish pulp, of the 
consistency of soft butter, and a handful 
of flat beans. The tree comes into full 


bearing in seven years, and yields two 
crops a year for thirty or forty years. The 
fruit is subjected to fermentation for a few 
days, often by burial in the earth, after 
which the beans are washed and dried. 

Mexican Indians were users of cocoa be¬ 
fore the discovery of America. Prescott 
tells of the vast quantities of cacao found 
growing along the Pacific coast by Pizarro 
and his followers, and of the use of cacao 
in Montezuma’s household. “He was ex¬ 
ceedingly fond of it, to judge from the 
quantity, no less than fifty jars or pitch¬ 
ers being prepared for his own daily con¬ 
sumption. Two thousand more were al¬ 
lowed for that of his household.” Bags 
of cacao beans were used for money. The 
Mexicans called the beverage made ’from 
cacao chocolate, or cocoa water, whence 
our name chocolate. 

Once the beans have been fermented, 
cleaned, and dried, they are ground. The 
fermenting takes the place of roasting for 
coffee. Pure cocoa goes on the market 
either in this form or as beans. Ground 
cocoa, even from the best houses, is likely 
to contain a judicious quantity of other ma¬ 
terial. 

As ordinarily understood, chocolate is 
prepared by making a paste of ground co¬ 
coa, usually with sugar and such flavoring 
as cinnamon, cloves, or vanilla. The paste 
is compressed into cakes in iron molds and 
wrapped for the market. Chocolate is 
adulterated by putting in rice flour, starch, 
hazel-nuts, almonds, and cheap spices. The 
less gritty a cake of chocolate the purer 
the chocolate. The loose, dry powder is 
sold as cocoa; the sweetened cakes as 
chocolate. The world’s annual produc¬ 
tion of cocoa is about 300,000,000 pounds. 
Of this amount the United States consumes 
a fourth. The demand is increasing rapid¬ 
ly. Ecuador leads the nations in the pro¬ 
duction of cocoa. The importers of Ham¬ 
burg, Havre, and New York are the 
largest, buyers. 

Consul-General Herman R. Dietrich, in 
a report from Guayaquil, says that the 
principal product of Ecuador is cocoa, of 
which it furnishes nearly one-fifth of the 
world’s production. Mr Dietrich fur¬ 
nishes the following particulars. 


COCOANUT—COCYTUS 


The cacao tree grows on the warm lowlands 
and in the valleys tributary to the coast. The 
valleys adjacent to Guayaquil produce the great- 
sst quantity of any district in the world. In 1900 
there were 4,827 cacao plantations or farms in 
Ecuador, with a total of 58,551,142 trees. The 
yearly production, in pounds, was: In 1900, 
41,134,900; in 1901, 51,311,700; in 1902, 53,621,- 
300; in 1903, 49,921,300; in 1904, 61,339,600; in 
1905, 47,225,400, and in 1906, 52,690,500. 

Guayaquil cocoa has a specialty of its own, 
both in shape and aroma, and is easily distin¬ 
guished from the cocoa of other districts. The 
lower grades are very strong and coarse in flavor, 
while the better grades contain a larger percentage 
of theobroma, making them more valuable. Here 
the cocoa is divided into two classes, viz., upriver 
(arriba) and down river (abajo) ; to the latter 
class belong the grades known as Machala, 
Balao, Naranjal, and Tenguel. The cocoa com¬ 
ing from the plantations situated in the upriver 
district is far superior and always sells at a 
higher price. 

Ecuador’s annual exports, in round numbers, 
amount to $8,000,000, two-thirds of which is 
cocoa, an article for which a world-wide demand 
exists and in the production of which Ecuador 
enjoys a high reputation. The planting and cul¬ 
tivating of the cacao tree is being carried on 
more extensively here every year, as it is the gen¬ 
eral opinion that the article has a splendid future 
and that the present production is not sufficient 
to meet the growing demand or consumption. 
The plantations here are mostly in the hands of 
natives, many of whom have amassed sufficient 
fortunes to make Paris their future home. On 
some of the large plantations there are very fine 
residences. 

See Coca; Cocoanut, etc. 

Cocoanut, the well known nut of a 
palm tree. The natural home of the cocoa- 
nut palm is on the shores of the low trop¬ 
ical islands of the Pacific. It is an impor¬ 
tant tree in Ceylon, Sumatra, Java, the 
Philippines, and Hawaii. The trunk of 
the tree is a foot or two in diameter. It 
rises straight and trim, carrying a crown 
or tuft of leaves at a height of seventy- 
five to one hundred feet. The leaves wave 
gracefully like plumes. Many are from 
ten to twenty feet in length and are used 
by the natives to thatch their huts. The 
nuts hang at the bases of the leaves in clus¬ 
ters of ten or fifteen. Several clusters may 
be expected to ripen during the year. A 
Jamaica tree yields 100 nuts a year. Co¬ 
coanut trees follow the coast in a fringe, 
and plant themselves naturally. Nuts fall 
from overhanging trees into the sea and 

are carried like boats along the coast and 
11-14 


cast up to take root anywhere. A tree 
matures in seven or eight years and bears 
during the lifetime of a person. Cocoa- 
nuts are pretty well known all over the 
world. The fresh milk is a fit article of 
food. Dried cocoanut meat or copra, is an 
article of commerce from which seventy 
per cent of its own weight of cocoanut oil 
is extracted. Thirty ordinary nuts will 
yield a gallon of oil. It is used extensive¬ 
ly to make stearine candles and soap. 
Like that of other palms, the sap of the 
cocoanut tree yields a sweet wine called 
toddy by the Hindus. On undergoing fer¬ 
mentation and distillation, sweet toddy 
yields arrack, as the Arabians call it, the 
alcoholic liquor of the tropics. 

The cocoanut tree is put to many uses 
by the natives. The husk of the nut is 
surrounded by a fiber called coir, from 
which paper, twine, ropes, matting, door¬ 
mats, mattresses, brooms, and brushes are 
made. The shell is used for ladles and 
cups. When burnt, it produces an excel¬ 
lent lampblack. Cocoanut charcoal is ex¬ 
cellent as a powder for the teeth. The 
young leaves of the trees are eaten, like cab¬ 
bage. Cloth, hats, bonnets, fans, baskets, 
bedding, thatch, and fish nets are made of 
the leaves. The trunk is used for canoes, 
posts, rafters, and fences. The ribs of the 
leaves are used for paddles, spears, arrows, 
and torches. In fact, the uses to which 
the cocoanut palm may be put rival those 
of the bamboo in variety and number. Co- 
coanuts ripen and fall the year around. 
Average cocoanuts are worth about twenty 
dollars a thousand in New York, London, 
and other prominent seaports. American 
imports of cocoanuts and cocoanut prod¬ 
ucts for a recent year were $2,000,000. 

See Cocoa. 

Cocoon. See Silk; Insects. 

Cocytus, ko-sLtus, in classical my¬ 
thology, a river of Hades. The name came 
from a Greek word meaning to weep, and 
the Cocytus was the “River of Lamenta¬ 
tion.” Those whose bodies had not received 
burial rites were doomed to wander a hun¬ 
dred years on the banks of this stream be¬ 
fore the ferryman Charon could take them 
across. See Hades. 

Some poetic descriptions of Cocytus are: 


COD-CODE 


Cocytus, named of lamentation loud, 

Heard on the rueful stream. —Milton. 

A blacke Hood, which flowed about it round— 
That is the river of Cocytus deepe 
In which full many soules do endlesse wayle 
and weepe. —Spenser. 

There stood the first and prayed him hard to 
waft their bodies o’er. 

With hands stretched out for utter love of that 
far-lying shore; 

But that grim sailor now takes these, now those, 
from out the band, 

While all the others far away he thrusteth from 
the sand. 

. . . Those borne across the wave 
Are buried ; none may ever cross the awful roar¬ 
ing road 

Until their bones are laid at rest within their last 
abode. 

An hundred years they stray about and wander 
round the shore, 

Then they at last have grace to gain the pools 
desired so sore. —Virgil. 

Cod, an important food fish. There 
are some sixty species of cod and closely 
allied fishes. The common cod is spindle- 
shaped with a long tail. The skin is fur¬ 
nished with small, soft scales, inclosed in 
sacs. The mouth is wide. The lower jaw 
is furnished with a single feeler and the 
pair of lower front fins are reduced to the 
same office. The general color of the fish 
is brown above with dark spots, and silvery 
sheen beneath. It is from two to four 
feet long and weighs from two to seventy- 
five pounds. It is common in the North 
Atlantic from Greenland and Norway to 
Virginia and Spain, and in the North Pa¬ 
cific as far south as Oregon. The coasts of 
Norway, the British Isles, and especially 
the Banks of Newfoundland are noted 
for cod fisheries. Cape Cod was so named 
by the early navigators for the abundance 
of cod found off the coast. At certain 
seasons, cod approach the Lofoden Isles, 
off the coast of Norway, in shoals 100 feet 
deep, estimated to contain not less than 
120,000,000 fishes. 

Cod are taken with hook and line, the 
largest at a depth of 150 to 250 feet. Long 
lines secured with anchors, and having 
short lines attached at intervals of six feet, 
are set. A single schooner may set several 
trawls of this sort, carrying 12,000 or 15,- 
000 hooks. The fishermen go along the 
lines in their dories, taking in the fish, and 


rebaiting the hooks. Cod are caught also 
by hand lines lowered from the sides of the 
fishing boat. Small fish and shell fish are 
used as bait. When cod are biting, a fish¬ 
ing boat is a busy place, as is expressed 
by the saying, “Fish, cut bait, or go 
ashore.” 

The eggs float. The young hatch in 
twelve days and attain the size of minnows 
in a few weeks. In a year they are a foot 
long. It is said that a 75 pound codfish 
produces 9,000,000 eggs in a single season. 
Nevertheless, the incessant fishing for cod 
has diminished the catch very noticeably. 
Over half the population of Newfound¬ 
land is engaged in codfishing. Boston and 
Gloucester, Massachusetts, handle about 
$3,000,000 worth of codfish annually. The 
total catch of the North Atlantic is esti¬ 
mated at about $25,000,000. 

Codliver oil, obtained from the livers 
of the cod, is prepared in Great Britain, 
Iceland, Norway, and Newfoundland. It 
is used for dressing leather, and has of late 
obtained importance in medicine as a cure 
for consumption. Firms engaged in the 
purchase of oils for this purpose select the 
livers with care, and insist on the utmost 
cleanliness in rendering and bottling. The 
codliver oil having the best reputation with 
physicians is pressed from winter cod at 
the Lofoden Isles. It is marketed by way 
of Christiania. 

The United States fish commission 
hatches and liberates about 350,000,000 
young cod annually. 

See Fish; St. Pierre. 

C. O. D., an abbreviation of “collect on 
delivery.” A clerk, or messenger may be 
sent to deliver goods with instructions to 
collect the pay for the goods on delivery. 
Merchandise may be sent C. O. D. by an 
express company to be delivered on pay¬ 
ment of the price. The company charges 
the customer for carrying the goods and 
charges the merchant for carrying back the 
money. See Express. 

Code. See Cipher. 

Code, a systematic compilation of law, 
authorized to take the place of preceding 
laws. By the successive enactment of new 
laws, repeals, amendments, and reenact¬ 
ments, the laws of a country gradually 


CODE NAPOLEON—CO-EDUCATION 


grow into a state of confusion. Only the 
best trained lawyers know where to find 
all the law on a given point. When the 
law of centuries is gathered together and 
straightened out,—the law on divorce, for 
instance, being set forth clearly in a single 
paragraph or chapter, and all dead clauses 
omitted,—such a compilation is called the 
code. If approved by legislative authority, 
it takes the place of all prior law, and is 
the only law of the land. One of the most 
famous codes is the Justinian code, pre¬ 
pared by ten Roman lawyers in the reign 
of the Emperor Justinian. It is the foun¬ 
dation of most of the law of the civilized 
world. Another noted code is the code of 
Napoleon, prepared under the direction of 
Napoleon Bonaparte. It took effect in 
1804-10. The code of Napoleon is the ba¬ 
sis of the law of Louisiana, that state hav¬ 
ing been at one time a French possession. 
English law has not been codified. Prus¬ 
sian law was codified during the reign of 
Frederick the Great. In the United States, 
the most notable code is that prepared for 
New York under the supervision of the 
learned David Dudley Field in 1865. Al¬ 
though the legislature of New York could 
never be brought to adopt this code, it has 
formed the basis of codes for a score of 
states from Ohio to Oregon. See De¬ 
cemvirs; Justinian I. 

Code Napoleon. See Law. 

Codlin-Moth, the well known pest 
of the fruit grower. The adult is a beau¬ 
tiful little moth, with finely mottled gray, 
or rosy, front wings. The ends of the 
fore wings are marked by a brownish spot 
crossed by small, irregular golden bands. 
The moth lives in the pupa stage over win¬ 
ter. It emerges in late spring and lays its 
eggs in apple blossoms, just as the petals 
are about to fall. As soon as the eggs have 
hatched, the larvae begin to burrow into 
the young apple. The “worms” live in 
the core of the apple and cause the fruit 
to wither and fall. When full grown, the 
larvae eat their way out through the side 
of the fruit. They then spin their cocoons 
in some sheltered place and remain dor¬ 
mant over winter. The codlin-moth is the 
worst enemy of the orchard. It has to be 
fought by spraying the trees with a copious 


shower of Paris green water as soon as pos¬ 
sible after the petals fall. Particles of 
Paris green, lodging in the calyx, are eaten 
by the young larvae. “The falling spray,” 
says Comstock, “lodges in the blossom end 
of the young apple, and the larva which 
hatches from an egg laid in this position 
gets a dose of poison with its first meal, 
and dies before it can eat its way into the 
apple.” One authority says that $8,000,- 
000 a year are spent in spraying American 
apple orchards to prevent tne ravages of the 
codlin-moth. 

Codliver Oil. See Cod; Oil; Lofo- 

DEN. 

Cody, ko'di, William Frederick 

(1846-), an American scout and showman, 
best known as “Buffalo Bill.” He was 
born in Scott County, Iowa. The family 
moved to the vicinity of Fort Leavenworth, 
and here, while still a child, young Cody 
was employed by express companies to car¬ 
ry packages across country on horseback. 
He was hardly out of boyhood when he 
was employed as a government scout. He 
became distinguished as a fearless rider, a 
keen and skillful hunter, and an expert 
plainsman. Cody won the name of Buf¬ 
falo Bill by contracting with the Kansas 
Pacific Railway Company to supply its la¬ 
borers with buffalo meat. It is said that 
he killed over four thousand buffaloes dur¬ 
ing one season. In 1883 he succeeded in 
organizing the “Wild West Show,” a 
scheme he had long cherished. He gath¬ 
ered a large number of Indians and cow¬ 
boys, collected much valuable material, of 
which the famous “Deadwood Coach” is 
perhaps the best example, and presented an 
exhibition of early frontier life which be¬ 
came known the world over. Cody is the 
last of the six great scouts of America. The 
others are Boone, Carson, Crockett, Bridg- 
er and “Wild Bill.” 

Co-education of the Sexes. In the 

United States over 96 per cent of pupils 
enrolled in elementary schools are in mixed 
schools. In public secondary schools the 
per cent is slightly less, being about 95. 
The high schools where the sexes are sepa¬ 
rated are found principally in Boston, New 
York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charles¬ 
ton, and New Orleans. The establishment 


CO-EDUCATION 


of manual training high schools has in¬ 
creased slightly the proportion of pupils in 
separate schools. The large majority of 
women in colleges are in co-educational 
institutions. Excluding institutions of 
higher learning for women only, we have 
in the United States 68 per cent of such 
institutions co-educational. 

In foreign countries we find a different 
state of affairs. In England 65 per cent of 
elementary pupils are in mixed schools, in 
Scotland 97 per cent, in Ireland 51 per 
cent. In France separate schools are the 
rule in elementary departments, but senti¬ 
ment is gaining in favor of mixed schools. 
In the German States separate elementary 
schools for the sexes are maintained as far 
as practicable. In Italy segregation is al¬ 
most universal. In Scandinavian countries 
conditions more nearly like those in the 
United States prevail. In England sepa¬ 
rate secondary schools are the rule, but 
highly successful experiments in co-educa¬ 
tion are being conducted in Keswick and 
Harpenden. In Germany the Grand 
Duchy of Baden has made extensive experi¬ 
ments in co-education in secondary schools 
and favorable reports are given out, but, 
generally speaking, segregation is the prac¬ 
tice. Attempts are being made to bring the 
secondary schools for girls up to the effi¬ 
ciency and scope of schools of like grades 
for boys. As far as higher educational 
institutions in Europe are concerned, wom¬ 
en are for the most part excluded. How¬ 
ever, sentiment in favor of their admission 
seems to be gaining. Evidence of this is 
the increasing attention to subjects in 
which women especially are interested, such 
as domestic science and home and municipal 
sanitation. 

To return to the United States, it may be 
observed that the number of girls in sec¬ 
ondary schools is increasing at a much 
more rapid rate than the number of boys. 
The same may be said of higher institu¬ 
tions of learning, if we leave out of 
consideration the professional and techni- 
cological schools. Two reasons for co-edu¬ 
cation are chiefly responsible for its extent. 
It is more economical thus to educate, in 
the opinion of very many parents. The 
belief in the justice of equal opportunities 


for the young regardless of sex also 
acts to increase the number of co-educa¬ 
tional institutions. However, the latter 
cause for increasing co-educational institu¬ 
tions is also the basis for agitation for 
segregation of the sexes. It is contended 
that equal opportunity for each sex de¬ 
mands unequal education, or, at least, a 
different education for the sexes. What 
educates one may not educate another at 
all. If the sexes require different prep¬ 
aration in order that each may fulfil its 
function, then co-education may be inju¬ 
rious for either if it is adapted to the other. 
The main arguments for and against co¬ 
education are as follows. 

The movement for segregation of sexes 
in secondary and higher institutions of 
learning assumes fundamental sex differ¬ 
ences. It attempts to prevent an alleged 
fatal feminization of education due to the 
preponderance of girls in boys’ schools, or 
even the presence of girls at all in such 
schools. It is feared that otherwise the 
tendency will be to emasculate education 
so that it may not be too rugged for girls. 
With the progress of civilization we have 
an increased differentiation of function, 
and this bears on the question of education. 
The docility of the girls may be inspiration 
to better manners on the part of the boy, 
but he loses virility. He may have too 
good manners. He should work off his 
natural brutality to a certain extent. The 
girl, too, loses some of the bloom of the 
maiden. Thus there is a loss on both sides 
of the distinctive characteristics of each 
sex. 

Girls are superior in certain studies, lan¬ 
guage for example. Girls like the classifi¬ 
cation element in botany, while boys prefer 
studying the habitat of plants. Therefore, 
in all points in the curriculum, not only is 
there a difference of taste as to subjects but 
as to the carrying out of the instruction 
in each subject. G. Stanley Hall says: 
“When we look the facts squarely in the 
face, we find that constant association of 
the sexes tends to rub off a little of the 
charm which each normally feels for the 
other.” From this point of view it is ar¬ 
gued that co-education tends to lessen the 
probabilities of marriage. 


COEUR DE LION—COFFEE 


On the side of co-education it is contend¬ 
ed that the objections urged against the 
custom are valid as against the abuse of the 
system and not against co-education itself. 
Schools may be “feminized” by effeminate 
men more effectually than by womanly 
women. The choice of electives in sec¬ 
ondary and higher institutions removes ob¬ 
jections urged against boys and girls being 
educated in the same institution. Injuries 
to the health of girls are due to ignorance 
of simple hygienic laws, and may be avoid¬ 
ed without segregation. Courteous man¬ 
ners are not evidences of loss of virility. 
Ideals of conduct are not properly related 
to sex. The ruder forms of vice flourish 
under conditions obtaining in separate 
schools for men. In answer to the objec¬ 
tions made by young men to the presence 
of young women in college classes, it is 
urged that young men thus objecting are 
the dissolute or the boorish. Referring to 
the question of marriage, David Starr Jor¬ 
dan says: “It is true, no doubt, that culti¬ 
vated women are more exacting than are 
other women. They are less likely to marry 
for convenience, and they expect more of 
their husbands. For these same reasons 
their marriages are less likely to prove un¬ 
happy.” 

As education becomes more scientific it 
will become more differentiated. Larger 
opportunities will be given each one, boy 
or girl, young man or woman, by suiting 
the instruction to the needs of each. This 
will necessarily result in a large number of 
electives in any curriculum. There will 
always exist, however, a considerable por¬ 
tion of the course of study which may be 
educative to persons of both sexes. The 
co-association of the sexes seems to be the 
natural law of life at all its stages.—A. 
W. Rankin, Professor of Education, Uni¬ 
versity of Minnesota. 

Coeur de Lion, kur de ll'on, lion-heart¬ 
ed, a name given to Richard I of England, 
because of his courage. See Richard. 

Coffee, kof'fe, the dried seed of a 
laurel-like evergreen shrub. Its native 
home is Abyssinia or Arabia. It grows to 
a height of six to thirty feet, but in culti¬ 
vation it is pruned to a bush little higher 
than a man’s head. Coffee trees are started 


in nurseries and are transplanted like fruit 
trees. A tree begins to bear when three 
years old, and produces from one to five 
pounds for twenty years. Methods of 
cultivation do not seem to differ materially 
from those used in raising cherries which, 
in fact, the ripe fruit resembles. In har¬ 
vesting, the ripe berries are shaken down* 
on cloths under the trees, the fruit is dried 
in the sun, then pulped, as the process is 
called, and washed. After drying again, 
and hulling and cleaning, the coffee beans 
are picked over, sorted, and put up in bags 
for market. Machines have been invented 
for removing the pulp green, thereby hur¬ 
rying the crop to market. Mocha coffee 
gets its name from an Arabian port that 
formerly exported coffee. The supply of 
Mocha coffee is limited. There are no 
plantations. It is produced by groves of 
bushes surrounding the homes of the Arabs. 
Most of it is used by the Arabs them¬ 
selves. Local dealers purchase small quan¬ 
tities, much as traders buy blueberries from 
the Chippewas. When a load has been col¬ 
lected in this tedious way, it is sent off in 
a caravan to Aden, perhaps 700 miles away. 

Rio coffee is named from a Brazilian sea¬ 
port. Brazil produces two-thirds of the 
world’s coffee. Java coffee is supposed to 
come from the island of Java, but it is 
difficult to rely on names any more. 
Ceylon, Porto Rico, Cuba, Hawaii, and the 
Philippine Islands have large plantations 
or coffee orchards, as they are sometimes 
called. The United States is the great 
coffee market of the world, the people of 
Great Britain and the Continent being 
more inclined to tea. New York receives 
more coffee than any other city in the 
world. Ground coffees are so adulterated 
with carrot, parsnip, dandelion, beans, 
peas, lentils, and other cheap ingredients 
that public favor has been extended to 
whole coffee that may be ground by the 
grocer under the eye of the purchaser. 
Even then artificial coffee beans are palmed 
off. Adulterants mixed with coffee are 
ground up into a sort of dough. Machines 
have been devised for pressing kernels out 
of this paste that when dried and roasted 
look enough like the genuine to pass care¬ 
less inspection. 


COFFERDAM—COIN 


An article in the United States Consular 
Report for February, 1904, gives much 
interesting information relative to the cul¬ 
tivation of coffee. According to the writer, 
there are in Asia, Africa, and America 
49,000 coffee plantations, having 1,800,- 
000,000 coffee-bearing trees. There are 
employed in the industry 2,220,000 men, 
women, and children. The total annual 
production is 2,881,000,000 pounds, or 
21,500,000 bags. Five hundred trees are 
set to the acre. The average yield per 
tree is 1 3/5 pounds. The average cost 
of raising per pound is 4.7 cents. The av¬ 
erage selling price at the plantation is 9 
cents. The total value of the coffee crop 
to the planters is given at $225,000,000. 
Bailey’s Cyclopedia (1908) puts the 
world’s total production at “over 1,500,- 
000,000 pounds” yearly. 

Cofferdam, a contrivance resorted to 
by bridge builders. A typical cofferdam 
may be likened to a huge barrel without 
head or bottom. It is built around the 
spot where it is desired to erect a pier. 
Water and mud are pumped out, enabling 
workmen to enter and lay a proper founda¬ 
tion for the proposed pier. If the bottom, 
for instance, be of clay it may be possible 
to excavate to some depth to secure proper 
footing. In case it is necessary to go deep 
into the bottom for a footing the caisson 
is employed. Not infrequently an engine 
drives two tight circles of piles, one within 
the other, and fills the space between the 
circles of piling with clay rammed down 
close to make it water-tight. See Caisson. 

Coffin, Charles Carleton (1823-1896), 
an American novelist. He was born at 
Boscawen, New Hampshire. After receiv¬ 
ing an academic education he turned his at¬ 
tention to civil engineering and later to 
telegraphy. When about thirty years of 
age he began to write for Boston news¬ 
papers and during the Civil War was cor¬ 
respondent for the Boston Journal. He 
also reported the Austro-Prussian War of 
1866 and the Paris Exposition of 1867. 
From this time he was engaged chiefly in 
literary work, his earlier works being pub¬ 
lished, as were his letters over the name 
of “Carleton.” His works include Days 
and Nights on the Battlefield, Winning 


His Way, Boys of * 76 , Old Times in the 
Colonies, Story of Liberty, Following the 
Flag, Life of Garfield, Life of Lincoln, 
Caleb Krinkle. 

Coffin, Levi, a noted American aboli¬ 
tionist. He was born near Newgarden, 
North Carolina, in 1798, and died in Avon¬ 
dale, Ohio, in 1877. His father was a 
farmer. Young Coffin removed to Ohio 
and engaged in farming. He took an 
active interest in the colored people, and 
was one of the most persistent and prom¬ 
inent of those who helped runaway slaves 
on the way to Canada, being known, in fact, 
as the “president of the underground rail¬ 
way.” See Underground Railway. 

Cognac, kon'yak, a noted brandy, so 
called from the town of that name in south¬ 
western France. It is made by fermenta¬ 
tion and distillation from white grape 
wine. See Alcohol; Wine. 

Cohesion , the attraction or force by 
which the various particles of the same ma¬ 
terial cling together. The attraction be¬ 
tween paint and wood is adhesion. The at¬ 
traction between the particles of a copper 
wire is cohesion. If wires of the same 
size be tested for their strength of cohesion, 
that is to say, for their breaking strength, 
the relative results are about as follows: 
Gold, 15; silver, 19; platinum, 26; copper, 
30; soft iron, 36; steel, 56. Heat dimin¬ 
ishes attraction of cohesion. Liquids have 
less cohesion than solids. If a substance 
be heated sufficiently, attraction of cohe¬ 
sion may be entirely overcome and repul¬ 
sion set up, that is to say, the. substance 
may be converted into a gas. See Glue. 

Coin, a piece of metal passing from 
hand to hand as money. Coin is also 
used in a collective sense for metallic 
money. An establishment in which coin is 
made is known as a mint. The study of 
coins is called numismatics. It has been 
the practice from antiquity to stamp coins 
with the portrait of some ruler or other 
person whom it is desired to honor. The 
side of the coin which contains the face or 
portrait is called the obverse; the other 
side is called the reverse. Our only knowl¬ 
edge of the features of Alexander the 
Great and other historical personages is 
derived from the obverse of ancient coins. 



COFFEE IN BLOOM—Costa Rica 










































COIN 


The collection and sale of old coins has 
become a business in itself. Dealers in the 
Old World cities fill their windows and 
showcases with trays containing a bewil¬ 
dering display of coins from all parts 
of the world. The ruins of ancient cities 
have been ransacked for specimens of coin¬ 
age. It is surprising how many different 
coins have been found in China, Japan, 
India, Persia, Turkey, Egypt, and other 
seats of ancient civilization. Greek coins 
are found in the excavations of old temples 
and sites of former cities. Schliemann 
found coins in old Troy. Roman coins are 
found seemingly wherever the Romans 
pitched their camps. The ancient gold and 
silver coins are in a very fair state of pres¬ 
ervation. 

In the eyes of a dealer, the value of a 
coin depends on its age, rarity, and condi¬ 
tion. The more a coin has been worn the 
less it is worth. A rare coin in poor condi¬ 
tion is worth many times the price of a 
common coin in perfect condition. ' A few 
prices of American coins quoted from the 
catalog of a New York dealer may not be 
without interest: The tw r enty dollar gold 
piece of 1849 is quoted at $125; the ten 
dollar gold piece of 1798 at $25; the five 
dollar gold piece of 1822 at $200; the three 
dollar gold piece of 1875 at $30; the quar¬ 
ter eagle of 1826 at $20; the gold dollar of 
1875 at $12; the silver dollar of 1794 at 
$50; the silver half dollar of 1797 at $40; 
the silver quarter of 1827 at $50; the sil¬ 
ver twenty cent piece of 1877 at $1.50; 
the silver dime of 1804 at $6; the silver 
half dime of 1802 at $50; the silver three 
cent piece of 1873 at $0.60; the nickel 
five cent piece of 1877 at $1.25; the 
nickel three cent piece of 1877 at $1.10; 
the bronze two cent of 1873 at $0.75; the 
bronze cent of 1856 at $3; the copper cent 
of 1799 at $25; the copper half cent of 
1796 at $25; the pine tree shilling of 
Massachusetts at $25; Lord Baltimore’s 
penny of 1769 at $50; the Virginia shil¬ 
ling at $25; the Connecticut three pence 
of 1737 at $50; the New York gold doub¬ 
loon of 1787 at $150; the Vermont half 
dollar at $125; the Kentucky halfpenny 
of 1796 at $10. Pieces coined by order of 
the Continental Congress vary in value 
from ten cents to thirty dollars. Auction 


sales of rare coins are even more interesting 
than book auctions. They are attended by 
eager purchasers. At a recent auction in 
New York City 561 pieces fetched $7,000. 
An American silver dollar of 1804 was 
bid in at $1,100. A twenty dollar gold 
piece of 1849 brought $150. A dollar of 
1838 brought $150. Two half dollars 
brought $78 each. Seven half cents sold 
for a total of $304. At a recent sale a 
Chicago man paid $2,165 for an American 
ten dollar gold piece of 1822. 

The members of a numismatic society 
in Chicago own a total of 350,000 coins. 
One member owns 65,000 pieces. The socie¬ 
ty includes many wealthy members. They 
design to center their collections finally 
in the Field Museum. The greatest col¬ 
lections of coins abroad are to be seen in 
the museums of Berlin and Paris. The 
books written on coins and coinage form a 
large library in themselves. 

The coins issued from the United 
States Mint from 1792 to January 1, 1908, 
are the following: 

GOLD COINS. 

Double Eagles —Authorized March 3, 1849; 
weight, 516 grains; fineness, .900. Total amount 
coined to Jan. 1, 1908, $2,083,762,800. Full legal 
tender. 

Eagles —Authorized April 2, 1792; weight, 270 
grains; fineness .91645 ; weight changed, act of 
June 28, 1834, to 258 grains; fineness changed, 
act of June 28, 1834, to .899225; fineness 

changed, act of Jan. 1837, to .900. Total amount 
coined to Jan. 1, 1908, $430,540,780. Full legal 
tender. 

Half-Eagles —Authorized April 2, 1792; 

weight 135 grains; fineness, .91645: weight 
changed, act of June 28, 1834, to 129 grains; 
fineness changed, act of June 28, 1834, to .899225 ; 
fineness changed, act of Jan. 8, 1837, to .900. 
Total amount coined to Jan. 1, 1908, $322,053,765. 
Full legal tender. 

Quarter-Eagles —Authorized April 2, 1792; 

weight, 67.5 grains; fineness, .91645; weight 
changed, act of June 28, 1834, to 64.5 grains; 
fineness changed, act of June 28, 1834, to .899225 ; 
fineness changed, act of Jan. 18, 1837, to .900. 
Total amount coined Jan. 1, 1908, $32,411,255. 
Full legal tender. 

Three-Dollar Piece —Authorized Feb. 21, 1853; 
weight, 77.4 grains; fineness, .900; coinage dis¬ 
continued, act of Sept. 26, 1890. Total amount 
coined, $1,619,376. Full legal tender. 

One Dollar —Authorized March 3, 1849; 

weight, 25.8 grains; fineness, .900; coinage dis¬ 
continued, act of Sept. 26, 1890. Total amount 
coined, $19,499,337. Full legal tender. 



COKE 


One Dollar, Louisiana Purchase Exposition— 
Authorized, June 28, 1902; weight, 25.8 grains; 
fineness, .900; total amount coined, $250,000. 

One Dollar, Lewis and Clark Exposition — 
Total amount coined to Jan. 1, 1908, $60,069. 

SILVER COINS. 

Dollar —Authorized April 2, 1792; weight, 416 
grains; fineness, .8924; weight changed, act of 
Jan. 18, 1837, to 412j4 grains; fineness changed, 
act of Jan. 18, 1837, to .900; coinage discon¬ 
tinued, act of Feb. 12, 1873. Total amount 
coined to Feb. 12, 1873, $8,031,238. Coinage re¬ 
authorized, act of Feb. 28, 1878. Coinage discon¬ 
tinued after July 1, 1891, except for certain 
purposes, act of July 14, 1890. Amount coined 
to Jan. 1, 1908, $578,303,848. Full legal tender 
except when otherwise provided in the contract. 

Trade Dollar —Authorized Feb. 12, 1873; 

weight, 420 grains; fineness, .900; legal tender 
limited to $5, act of June 22, 1874, (rev. stat.) ; 
coinage limited to export demand and legal-ten¬ 
der quality repealed, joint resolution, July 22, 
1876; coinage discontinued, act Feb. 19, 1887. 
Total amount coined, $35,965,924. 

I^afayette Souvenir Dollar —Authorized by act 
of March 3, 1899; weight, 412j4 grains; fineness, 
.900; total amount coined, $50,000. 

Half-Dollar —Authorized April 2, 1792; 

weight, 208 grains; fineness, .8924; weight 
changed, act of Jan. 18, 1837, to 206J^ grains; 
fineness changed, act of Jan. 18, 1873, to .900; 
weight changed, act of Feb. 21, 1853, to 192 
grains; weight changed, act of Feb. 12, 1873, to 
12j4 grams, or 192.9 grains. Total amount 
coined Jan. 1, 1908, $174,386,696.50. Legal 
tender, $10. 

Columbian Half-Dollar —Authorized Aug. 5, 
1892; weight, 192.9 grains; fineness, .900. Total 
amount coined, $2,500,000. Legal tender, $10. 

Quarter-Dollar —Authorized April 2, 1792; 

weight, 104 grains; fineness, .8924; weight 
changed, act of Jan. 18, 1837, to 103^ grains; 
fineness changed, act of Jan. 18, 1837, to .900; 
weight changed, act of Feb. 21, 1853, to 96 
grains; weight changed, act of Feb. 12, 1873, to 
6j4 grams, or 96.45 grains. Total amount 
coined to Jan. 1, 1908, $87,646,679.75. Legal 
tender, $10. 

Columbian Quarter-Dollar —Authorized March 
3, 1893; weight, 96.45 grains; fineness, .900. 
Total amount coined, $10,000. Legal tender, $10. 

Twenty-Cent Piece —Authorized March 3, 
1875; weight, 5 grams, or 77.16 grains; fineness, 
.900; coinage prohibited, act of May 2, 1878. 
Total amount coined, $271,000. 

Dime —Authorized April 2, 1792; weight, 41.6 
grains; fineness, .8924; weight changed, act of 
Jan. 18, 1837, to 41 grains; fineness changed, 
act of Jan. 18, 1837, to .900; weight changed, 
act of Feb. 21, 1853, to 38.4 grains; weight 
changed, act of Feb. 12, 1873, to 2j4 grams, or 
38.58 grains. Total amount coined to Jan. 1, 
1908, $55,927,628.10. Legal tender, $10. 

Half Dime —Authorized April 2, 1792; weight, 
20.8 grains; fineness, .8924; weight changed, act 
of Jan. 18, 1837, to 20^4 grains; fineness 


changed, act of Jan. 18, 1857, to .900; weight 
changed, act of Feb. 21, 1853, to 19.2 grains; 
coinage discontinued, act of Feb. 12, 1873. Total 
amount coined, $4,880,219.40. 

Three-Cent Piece —Authorized March 3, 1851; 
weight, 12J^ grains; fineness, .750; weight 
changed, act of March 3, 1853, to 11.52 grains; 
fineness changed, act of March 3, 1853, to .900; 
coinage discontinued, act of Feb. 12, 1873. Total 
amount coined, $1,282,087.20. 

MINOR COINS. 

Five-Cent ( Nickel )—Authorized May 16, 
1866; weight, 77.16 grains, composed of 75 per 
cent copper and 25 per cent nickel. Total amount 
coined to Jan. 1, 1908, $29,558,578.20. Legal 
tender for $1, but reduced to 25 cents by act of 
Feb. 12, 1873. 

Three-Cent ( Nickel )—Authorized March 3, 
1865; weight, 30 grains, composed of 75 per cent 
copper and 25 per cent nickel. Total amount 
coined, $941,349.48. Legal tender for 60 cents, 
but reduced to 25 cents by act of Feb. 12, 1873. 
Coinage discontinued, act of Sept. 26, 1890. 

Two-Cent ( Bronze )—Authorized April 22, 
1864; weight, 96 grains, composed of 95 per cent 
copper and 5 per cent tin and zinc. Coinage 
discontinued, act of Feb. 12, 1873. Total amount 
coined, $912,020. 

Cent ( Copper )—Authorized April 2, 1792; 
weight, 264 grains; weight changed, act of Jan. 
14, 1793; to 208 grains; weight changed by 
proclamation of the president, Jan. 26, 1796, in 
conformity with act of March 3, 1795, to 168 
grains; coinage discontinued, act of Feb. 21, 1857. 
Total amount coined, $1,562,887.44. 

Cent (Nickel )—Authorized Feb. 21, 1857; 
weight, 72 grains, composed of 88 per cent cop¬ 
per and 12 per cent nickel. Coinage discontinued, 
act of April 22, 1864. Total amount coined, $2,- 
007,720. 

Cent ( Bronze )—Coinage authorized, act of 
April 22, 1864; weight, 48 grains, composed of 
95 per cent copper and 5 per cent tin and zinc. 
Total amount coined to Jan. 1, 1908, $16,428,- 
043.68. Legal tender, 25 cents. 

^ Half-Cent (Copper )—Authorized April 2, 
1792; weight, 132 grains; weight changed, act of 
Jan. 14, 1793, to 104 grains; weight changed by 
proclamation of the president, Jan. 26, 1796, in 
conformity with act of March 3, 1795 to 84 
grains; coinage discontinued, act of Feb. 21, 
1857. Total amount coined, $39,926.11. 

SUMMARY. 

Value 

Gold coinage . $2,890,198,640.00 

Silver coinage. 941,224,082.95 

Minor coins . 51,450,524.91 

Total coinage . $3,882,873,247.86 

See Money. 

Coke, the solid portion that remains 
after coal is subjected to intense heat. 
Coke is produced ordinarily in so-called 
coke ovens of the beehive type. One 







COKE—COLD STORAGE 


hundred bushels of coal are poured into 
the oven, which is then heated gradually 
to a temperature of 1400° C. As soon 
as the heat reaches 100° C. gas begins to 
escape; tarry products are given off up to 
600° C. First class coke rings with a 
metallic sound and has a silvery luster. 
It is of much importance in melting metals, 
as it burns with a pure flame without 
gas or smoke, and, being pure carbon, gives 
a most intense heat. In some sections of 
the country, where coke is in great demand 
for iron furnaces, the gas and tar products 
are sold cheaply as by-products, or al¬ 
lowed to go to waste. In the sections 
remote from the iron regions coal is heated 
for illuminating gas, and coke is a by¬ 
product. Where there is a demand it is 
sold chiefly as fuel. It is not so easily 
kindled as coal, but is an excellent fuel 
for heat. Coal is expected to yield about 
sixty-five per cent of its own weight in 
coke. The annual coke production of the 
United States is about 22,000,000 tons, 
over half of it in Pennsylvania; that of 
Great Britain is somewhat greater. 

Coke, Edward (1552-1634), a noted 
English jurist. In the reigns of Elizabeth, 
James I, and Charles I, he was a lawyer 
of the crown. He conducted the prosecu¬ 
tion against Sir Walter Raleigh, and was 
engaged in ferreting out the Gunpowder 
Plot. He,was a rough sort of man, not 
without integrity. He fell into disrepute 
with the court of Charles for resisting the 
arbitrary acts of the king. His fame, 
however, rests on a large treatise in four 
parts on the law of England. Portions 
are still used as text books in the law 
schools of this country. 

Colbert, kol-ber', Jean Baptiste 
(1619-1683), a noted French financier. 
Under Louis XIV, he was for twenty-two 
years minister of finance. He found an 
empty treasury and the public revenues 
spent two years in advance, with fraud, dis¬ 
order, and theft rampant. He reduced the 
rate of interest on the public debt, cut 
the rate of taxation in two, weeded out 
incapacity and dishonesty, increased the 
public income by $5,000,000, paid the 
enormous expense of two years of foreign 
war, and filled up the public treasury; yet 


he died out of favor with the king and his 
spendthrift court. During his manage¬ 
ment of the public purse, Colbert was lib¬ 
eral and enlightened in the encouragement 
of the fine arts and the sciences. At his 
suggestion the Academies of Sciences, of 
Architecture, and of Painting, the Royal 
Library, and the Garden of Plants, were 
given large grants of money. See Necker. 

Cold Storage, a method of preserving 
perishable goods, such as fruit, dairy prod¬ 
ucts, eggs, and meats, by storing them in 
a warehouse in which the air is kept at a 
low temperature by artificial means. The 
underlying principle to which cold storage 
owes its success is the important fact that 
bacteria cannot work in the cold, and that 
in consequence decay and putrefaction can¬ 
not take place in a cold room. Milk 
and butter keep well surrounded by the 
water of a cool spring. A cool cellar 
has a preservative influence. A refrigera¬ 
tor kept cool by the use of ice is a house¬ 
hold convenience, especially in the city. 
A commodious refrigerator has become a 
necessity to the hotelkeeper. The butcher 
and the grocer must now provide large re¬ 
frigerators for the perishable portion of 
their wares. 

Cold storage warehouses are refrigera¬ 
tors on a large scale. Some are cooled by 
ice, but the immense cold storage plants 
that have sprung up of late are cooled 
by means of ammonia without the use 
of an ounce of natural ice. The reader 
may have noticed on a hot day that a lit¬ 
tle water sprinkled on the floor cools off 
a room delightfully. This is due to the 
fact that in evaporating or drying up, as 
the water on the floor quickly does, a 
great amount of heat is taken from the air 
of the room, leaving it cool. On somewhat 
the same principle ammonia is used to pro¬ 
duce frost in a cold storage warehouse. 
It is evaporated in a system of pipes 
through the center of which run inner 
pipes containing a brine made of calcium 
chloride and water which becomes intense¬ 
ly cold without freezing. That is to say, 
the pipe of brine is surrounded by a larger 
pipe in which ammonia is evaporated, with 
the result of taking the heat out of the 
brine, and leaving it intensely cold like 


COLD STORAGE 


that in an ice cream freezer. The cold 
brine is forced through a second system 
of pipes somewhat like a steam heating 
system, suspended usually on the walls, or 
to the posts that support the floors of 
the various rooms of the warehouse. By 
governing the flow of brine, a room may 
be chilled simply, or it may be made so 
cold, even on a hot midsummer day, that 
its contents freeze solid. Both the brine 
and the ammonia are used over and over, 
like the steam in a heating plant. In an 
efficient plant or system, a ton of coal will 
furnish the power requisite to produce a 
cooling effect equivalent to that of from 
eight to fourteen tons of ice. Ice cannot 
be handled so efficiently nor so economical¬ 
ly, to say nothing of the economy of space 
and the neatness of the ammonia process. 
The capacity of an ammonia refrigerating 
machine is stated in terms of which the 
cooling influence of a ton of ice is the 
unit. A five hundred ton machine, such 
as is used in connection with large brew¬ 
eries and packing houses, is a plant whose 
cooling capacity may be represented as 
equal to the effect that might be obtained 
by bringing 500 tons of ice into the build¬ 
ing daily. 

Poultry, fish, and game may be 
frozen solid, in which condition they will 
keep sound for an indefinite period. Or¬ 
dinarily meats are kept at or near the freez¬ 
ing temperature. Fruits are placed in a 
cold, but not freezing room. Eggs are 
kept fresh in cold storage from two to six 
months, but it is difficult to keep them 
from spoiling on account of moisture. But¬ 
ter keeps well, but must not be frozen. 
It requires pure air or it will taint. 

Cold storage is one of the most satisfac¬ 
tory means of keeping furs. Insects, es¬ 
pecially moths, cannot work in the cold. 
Most large cities now have cold fur stor¬ 
age rooms in which furs may be hung up 
on hooks and checked till wanted. 

Refrigerated cars and ships are now 
used on a large scale for the transporta¬ 
tion of perishable articles. The fruit and 
vegetable centers of California and the 
South send their products to market in ice- 
cooled cars which are refilled with ice by 
the railway companies at regular stopping 


places. In the summer season refrigerated 
cars make regular trips of once a week 
and upward over nearly all lines of rail¬ 
road, delivering fresh meats and fruits, 
and collecting eggs and dairy products. 
The butcher, grocer, and local merchant 
regulate their orders and shipments accord¬ 
ingly. The meat raisers of Argentina send 
their products to European markets in re¬ 
frigerated ships. A storage house at Du¬ 
buque, Iowa, belonging to the Fruit Dis¬ 
patch Co., is cooled by four miles of pipes. 
It is capable of receiving a banana train 
of forty-four cars. The cars stand on 
track in hot weather and are cooled off 
after their hot journey from the Gulf. In 
midwinter the same plant is used to warm 
up the cars and their contents. About 
3,000 cars or $2,000,000 worth of bananas 
are sheltered in this warehouse yearly- 

The transportation and preservation of per¬ 
ishable produce has become one of the most 
serious problems which can engage the attention 
of engineers and others interested in the effica¬ 
cious and rapid dispatch of foodstuffs from one 
part of the world to the other. Statistics and 
statements from high authorities go to show that 
the transport and preservation of perishable 
produce is an enormous and growing business, 
and likely in the future to be one of the most 
important in the world. 

In spite of the careful fostering of home in¬ 
dustries intended to provide the food supply of 
the United Kingdom, the imports of provisions 
are regularly increasing. ' Instead of drawing on 
near-by countries, the English people are looking 
more and more to their colonies in distant parts 
of the world for these supplies. This is made 
possible by the present methods of refrigeration. 

There are 358 ships engaged in the trade of 
the United Kingdom that are fitted in part or 
throughout with a total refrigerating capacity of 
36,266,000 cubic feet. Of this number, 71 ships, with 
a capacity of 3,341,000 cubic feet for perishable 
produce, bring supplies from the United States; 
from Australia and New Zealand, 92 ships, with 
15,514,000 cubic feet cold-storage capacity, bring 
chiefly beef, mutton, and butter; from Canada 
come 47 ships, with 1,829,000 cubic feet capacity, 
chiefly with meats and dairy products. The num¬ 
ber of ships coming from South America carrying 
refrigerated cargo is not given, but their capacity 
for this class of goods is placed at 7,611,000 cubic 
feet. 

The port of London is at the head of the list 
in the number of vessels and their carrying 
capacity, and takes most of the Australian and 
New Zealand cargoes, while Liverpool is sec¬ 
ond and takes most of the North and South 
American cargoes. However, the shorter trips 
of the Liverpool steamers bring the yearly sail- 


COLERIDGE 


ings and capacity as high or higher than those 
of London. 

As the large quantities of foodstuffs arriving 
in this country can not be distributed direct to 
consumers, cold-storage warehouses have in¬ 
creased at the various seaports, in large centers 
of population, and at the principal dis¬ 
tributing markets. The approximate refrigerat¬ 
ing capacity of these warehouses in the principal 
towns varies from that of London, 9,000,000 cubic 
feet, to that of Hull, 250,000 cubic feet. The total 
capacity of these warehouses is not far from 
23,000,000 cubic feet. 

Ihe value of butter imports into the United 
Kingdom increased from $38,920,417 in 1887 to 
$108,951,120 in 1907, the largest increase com¬ 
ing from Australia. In meat imports the value 
increased from $188,160,046 in 1903 to $202,- 
651,818 in 1907. The average annual value of 
imported fruits, apples, apricots, peaches, oranges, 
pears, plums, lemons, and bananas for five years, 
from 1900 to 1904, was $38,086,016, while for 
the imports of 1907 the value was $45,257,228.—• 
Vice-Consul W. J. Sulis, of Liverpool, in Con¬ 
sular and Trade Reports. 

Coleridge, col'rij, Samuel Taylor 

(1772-1834), an English poet. He was a 
clergyman’s son, and, from his earliest 
years, a great reader. He admired Robinson 
Crusoe, The Arabian Nights , and other 
tales of adventure. Orphaned in his ninth 
year, he was sent to London, where he 
became a “blue-coat boy” at Christ’s Hos¬ 
pital. He seems to have been a precocious 
lad, who “read right through the cata¬ 
logue” of a library to which a chance ac¬ 
quaintance had subscribed for him, but who 
looked with contempt upon his duller com¬ 
rades. While other boys played football, 
he loved to dream or watch the drifting 
clouds. As he grew older, he would dis¬ 
course occasionally to his mates in the clois¬ 
ters of the school, or recite Homer in the 
original Greek, holding them spellbound 
by his wonderful voice and intonation. 

At nineteen he went to Cambridge, but 
getting into debt carelessly in his second 
year, he ran away from college and joined 
a regiment of dragoons. He soon regret¬ 
ted this step, and was bought out of the 
army by his friends. He returned to col¬ 
lege, where he adopted Unitarian and dem¬ 
ocratic views. He became absorbed in vis¬ 
ionary schemes, one of which was to found 
a model colony on the banks of the Sus¬ 
quehanna. He left college without taking 
a degree, and began writing prose and 
verse for the magazines. He became close¬ 


ly associated with Southey and Words¬ 
worth, the three comprising the “Lake 
School” of poets. Coleridge married early, 
but with insufficient means. Thereafter 
he received assistance frequently from his 
friends. Finally, he weakly deserted the 
wife and children he could not support, 
and Southey, who had married Mrs. Col¬ 
eridge’s sister, took them under his care. 

For fifteen years Coleridge was a slave 
to the opium habit, begun by taking the 
drug in time of illness. Such habit may 
in large measure account for the failure 
to fulfill the great promise of his youth. 
His genius was many sided, but, whatever 
path he entered, a weak will and a vac¬ 
illating purpose prevented arrival at the 
goal. After a severe struggle, and by the 
aid of a devoted physician, the habit was 
overcome. During the years left to him 
Coleridge devoted his time to philosophy 
and criticism. 

Coleridge’s personal magnetism, his pow¬ 
erful, if ill-balanced mind, his remarkable 
gift as a talker, won him many friends. 
That his faults and failures call for pity 
more than blame may be inferred from 
the fact that these friends continued to 
love and honor him. He seemed to write 
under sudden inspiration, and, if interrupt¬ 
ed, was often utterly unable to complete 
what he had begun. He said of himself: 
“The author has frequently purposed to 
finish for himself what had been original¬ 
ly, as it were, given to him; but the to¬ 
morrow is yet to come.” 

Coleridge’s influence on the opinion of 
the day was prodigious. To his friends, 
Wordsworth, Southey, and Lamb, his com¬ 
panionship seemed to act as a spur to bet¬ 
ter work, while Hazlitt, Scott, Poe, Lowell, 
and many others acknowledge a great debt. 

His most important poetical work was 
done in the year 1798. The Ancient Mar¬ 
iner, Cliristabel, Ode to France, Kubla 
Khan, and other poems were produced at 
this time. As he never equalled this work 
at any other period of his life, this year 
is called Coleridge’s annus mirabilis, or 
wonderful year. 

The origin of The Rime of the Ancient 
Mariner is of interest. The two friends, 
Wordsworth and Coleridge, started on a 


COLERIDGE 


walking tour. As they had little money, 
it was suggested that they produce con¬ 
jointly a poem for the New Monthly Mag¬ 
azine, the proceeds to defray the expense 
of the trip. On a previous 'occasion they 
had planned to publish a volume of verses 
for which Coleridge was to furnish poems 
whose incidents and scenes should be in 
part supernatural, but which should aim 
to depict faithfully the actual emotions 
which would be felt should such incidents 
and scenes be true. They now planned 
The Ancient Mariner to be constructed 
along these lines. Coleridge told of a 
dream related by a friend. Wordsworth 
added a few hints—suggested some lines. 
That same evening he withdrew from the 
endeavor. He has himself said, “Our re¬ 
spective manners proved so widely dif¬ 
ferent that it would have been quite 
presumptuous in me to do anything but sep¬ 
arate from an undertaking upon which 
I could only have been a clog.” The 
poem thus begun in November, 1797, was 
completed in March following, and was 
published in Lyrical Ballads during the 
summer. Wordsworth contributed most of 
the other poems to the volume. The An¬ 
cient Mariner was most harshly criticized 
at its appearance, Wordsworth himself 
attributing to it the failure of the Lyrical 
Ballads. None of Coleridge’s friends re¬ 
alized that he had produced an immortal 
poem. 

The tale is wholly imaginative, but the 
genius of the poet produces the impression 
of vivid reality. There is something weird 
in the very opening of the poem. The 
Mariner stops a man about to attend a 
wedding and “holds him with his glitter¬ 
ing eye,” while he relates his story. The 
wedding guest hears occasionally the mu¬ 
sic and merriment of the feast; but he 
cannot leave the old sailor, who is con¬ 
strained by a “woeful agony” to recount 
his sin and suffering. The tale is of a 
ship sailing into southern seas, driven to 
cross the line by storms, and caught in the 
ice of the Antarctic regions. An albatross 
appears, and is welcomed as a bird of 
good omen. The ice splits and the breeze 
helps them northward. But the mariner 
shoots the albatross on a sudden impulse, 


and woe follows the cruel deed. The ship 
enters the Pacific Ocean and is becalmed. 
The dead bird is hung about the sailor’s 
neck by his companions, as a penance for 
his crime. There is no water to drink 
and the crew perish of thirst. Then a 
phantom ship appears, on whose deck 
Death and Life-in-Death throw dice' for 
the soul of the wretched mariner. Life- 
in-Death wins. The mariner sees the 
souls of the dead men leave their bodies; 
he endures the awful loneliness of the 
wide ocean; he sees “the curse in a dead 
man’s eye.” At last, in an instant of 
self forgetfulness, he blesses the happy 
creatures of the deep—the water snakes 
that play about the ship. That moment 
the spell begins to break. Sleep refreshes 
him and there is an element of hope in all 
that follows. At last he beholds his na¬ 
tive land; but he is ever after constrained 
to wander from place to place, and teach 
by his tale the lesson of love for all life. 

That moment that his face I see, 

I know the man that must hear me 
To him my tale I teach. 

The unusual setting of the story, as well 
as the ballad meter, simple but artistic, 
are admirably suited to make impressive 
the supernatural element introduced into 
the poem, which would be grotesque, were 
it less realistic. We must regard the al¬ 
batross as the keynote of the tale. Six of 
the seven parts into which the poem is 
divided end with some reference to this 
bird. 

The versification is varied; the words 
and phrases felicitous; the melody of the 
stanzas unsurpassed; while the imagery is 
so vivid that what we remember seems to 
be the pictures we have seen, rather than 
the events that have been narrated. 

The following extracts give some idea 
of this power: 

And we did speak only to break 
The silence of the sea! 

As idle as a painted ship 
Upon a painted ocean. 

Water, water, everywhere, 

Nor any drop to drink. 

The Sun’s rim dips; the stars rush out; 

At one stride comes the dark. 


COLERIDGE—COLIGNI 


The moving moon went up the sky, 

And nowhere did abide: 

Softly she was going up, 

And a star or two beside— 

It ceased; yet still the sails made on 
A pleasant noise till noon, 

A noise like of a hidden brook 
In the leafy month of June, 

That to the sleeping woods all night 
Singeth a quiet tune. 

QUOTATIONS. 

Och Clo. —The other day I was what you 
would call floored by a Jew. He passed me 
several times, crying for old clothes in the most 
nasal and extraordinary tone I ever heard. At 
last I was so provoked, that I said to him, “Pray, 
why can’t you say, ‘old clothes’ in a plain way 
as I do now?” The Jew stopped, and looking 
very gravely at me, said in a clear and even fine 
accent, “Sir, I can say old clothes as well as 
you can; but if you had to say so ten times a 
minute, for an hour together, you would say Och 
Clo as I do nowand so he marched off. I 
was so confounded with the justice of his retort, 
that I followed and gave him a shilling, the 
only one I had.—Coleridge, Table Talk. 

Doing an evil to avoid an evil cannot be good. 

Greatness and goodness are not means but 
ends. 

A dwarf sees farther than a giant when he 
has the giant’s shoulders to mount on. 

I wish our clever young poets would remem¬ 
ber my homely definitions of prose and poetry; 
that is, prose,—words in their best order; 
poetry,—the best words in their best order. 

CRITICISMS. 

Coleridge suffered an almost lifelong punish¬ 
ment for his errors, whilst the world at large 
has the unwithering fruits of his labors and his 
genius and his sufferings.—De Quincey. 

The largest and most spacious intellect, the 
subtlest and most comprehensive, that has yet 
existed among men.—De Quincey. 

He is a wonderful man. His conversation 
teems with soul, mind, and spirit. Then he is so 
benevolent, so good-tempered and cheerful, and, 
like William, interests himself so much about 
every trifle. At first I thought him very plain, 
that is, for about three minutes: he is pale, thin, 
has a wide mouth, thick lips, and not very good 
teeth, longish, loose-growing, half-curling, rough 
black hair. But, if you hear him speak for five 
minutes, you think no more of them. His eye is 
large and full, and not very dark, but grey— 
such an eye as would receive from a heavy soul 
the dullest expression; but it speaks every emo¬ 
tion of his animated mind; it has more of “the 
poet’s eye in a fine frenzy rolling” than I ever 
witnessed. He has fine dark eyebrows, and an 
overhanging forehead.—Dorothy Wordsworth. 

Of Coleridge’s best verses I venture to affirm 
the world has nothing like them, and can never 
have.—Swinburne. 


To the man himself Nature had given, in high 
measure, the seeds of a noble endowment; and 
to unfold it had been forbidden him.—Carlyle. 

The most wonderful man I ever knew was 
Coleridge.—Wordsworth. 

Colic, a spasmodic pain in the abdomen 
dependent upon the irregular contractions 
of the muscular coat of the intestines. The 
word is from the same root as is colon, a 
name used to designate the large intestine. 
Colic is a symptom rather than a disease. 
Its causes are various, the most common be¬ 
ing irritation resulting from undigested 
food. Colic may, however, be of a neu¬ 
ralgic character, caused by cold, it may be 
the result of poison, or it may be the 
symptom of some affection of the kidneys 
or bladder. The first remedy for ordinary 
colic is warmth applied externally. Hot 
drinks are a relief oftentimes and a full 
dose of some aperient is indicated. 

Colic in infants is very common, often 
regarded as a necessary accompaniment of 
infancy. This, however, is not the case. 
No baby should be allowed to suffer from 
colic. If he be kept warm and clean, fed 
regularly, never allowed to suck in air in¬ 
stead of milk from his bottle or spoon and 
still cries often with colic, there is some¬ 
thing wrong with the quality or quantity 
of his food. No medicine of any sort 
should be given him, but an experienced 
physician should be summoned and his ad¬ 
vice followed in feeding the child. 

Coligni, ko-len-ye', Gaspard de (1517- 
1572), a French admiral. His life fell 
in the troublous - times of the civil war 
between the Protestant Huguenots and the 
Catholics. A brilliant career in the wars 
with Spain raised him to the rank of ad¬ 
miral. He became the leader of the Hu¬ 
guenot party. In an age of the foulest 
treachery and assassination, and the con¬ 
cealment of ambitious designs behind the 
veil of religion, Coligni appears to have 
been the one eminent man of character. 
Catharine de Medici favored the admiral 
until she found that he had more influence 
with her son, King Charles IX, than she 
relished. She then incited the weak king 
to authorize a wholesale massacre of all 
Huguenots on the night of St. Bartholo¬ 
mew. At the appointed hour, when the 


COLISEUM—COLLAR 


Paris mob fell upon the unsuspecting Hu¬ 
guenots, the Duke of Guise, leader of the 
Catholic party, hurried with armed men 
to the house of the aged admiral. His fol¬ 
lowers burst into Coligni’s bedchamber, 
thrust him through with their swords, and 
threw his body out of an upper window 
into the street below. In 1562 a Hugue¬ 
not colony under encouragement from Co- 
ligni founded the first white colony on the 
mainland of North America at Port Royal, 
South Carolina. The settlers named the 
country Carolina in honor of the same 
miserable Charles IX, but they lost the fort 
and supplies by fire and returned to 
France. See FIuguenots; Catharine de 
Medici; Massacre of St. Bartholomew. 

Coliseum, also Colosseum, one of the 
famous buildings of ancient Rome. It is 
also called the Flavian Amphitheater. It 
was begun by the Emperor Vespasian and 
finished by Domitian. It is an immense 
stone structure, oval in shape, surrounding 
a central arena in which wild beast shows, 
games, and gladiatoral contests were held. 
The vast structure covered six acres. It 
rested on four-score arches. The walls 
rose 140 feet. They were encrusted with 
marble and ornamented with four succes¬ 
sive orders of columns. Within, marble 
seats covered with cushions rose tier after 
tier, capable of seating 80,000 spectators. 
The dens of the wild beasts were in the 
basement. The Coliseum was opened to 
the public during the reign of Titus. Five 
thousand lions and other wild beasts were 
slain in the arena during opening games 
which lasted one hundred days. It is said 
that during the persecutions of the Chris- 
tains, entire families were forced into the 
arena. Wild beasts, purposely left with¬ 
out food for several days, were then in¬ 
troduced, that the spectators might witness 
the cruel sport of seeing them chase and 
devour human beings, as cats do mice. 
Many of the marble seats have been re¬ 
moved for building material, and a portion 
of the walls has fallen, but enough still 
remains to give an idea of former magnifi¬ 
cence. See Amphitheater. 

While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand ; 
When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall; 

And when Rome falls—the world. 

—Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. 


The following admirable description of the 
amphitheatre and its sports is from Gibbon : “The 
hunting, or exhibition of wild beasts, was con¬ 
ducted with a magnificence suitable to a people 
who styled themselves the masters of the world; 
nor was the edifice appropriated to that enter¬ 
tainment less expressive of Roman greatness. 
Posterity admires, and will long admire, the 
awful remains of the amphitheatre of Titus, 
which so well deserved the epithet of colossal. 
It was a building of an elliptic figure, five hun¬ 
dred and sixty-four feet in length, and four hun¬ 
dred and sixty-seven in breadth, founded on 
fourscore arches, and rising, with four succes¬ 
sive orders of architecture, to the height of one 
hundred and forty feet. The outside of the edi¬ 
fice was encrusted with marble, and decorated 
with statues. The slopes of the vast concave 
which formed the inside were filled and sur¬ 
rounded with sixty or eighty rows of seats of 
marble, likewise covered with cushions, and 
capable of receiving with ease above fourscore 
thousand spectators. Sixty-four vomitories (for 
by that name the doors were very aptly dis¬ 
tinguished) poured forth the immense multitude; 
and the entrances, passages, and staircases, were 
contrived with such exquisite skill, that each per¬ 
son, whether of the senatorial, the equestrian, or 
the plebeian order, arrived at his destined place 
without trouble or confusion. Nothing was 
omitted which in any respect could be subserv¬ 
ient to the convenience or pleasure of the specta¬ 
tors. They were protected from the sun and rain 
by an ample canopy occasionally drawn over their 
heads. The air was continually refreshed by the 
playing of fountains, and profusely impregnated 
by the grateful scent of aromatics. In the centre 
of the edifice the arena, or stage, was strewed with 
the finest sand, and successively assumed the most 
different forms. At one moment it seemed to rise 
out of the earth like the garden of the Hes- 
perides, and was afterwards broken into the 
rocks and caverns of Thrace. The subterraneous 
pipes conveyed an inexhaustible supply of water; 
and what had just before appeared a level plain 
might be suddenly converted into a wide lake, 
covered with armed vessels and replenished with 
the monsters of the deep. In the decorations of 
these scenes, the Roman emperors displayed their 
wealth and liberality; and we read on various 
occasions, that the whole furniture of the amphi¬ 
theatre consisted either of silver, or of gold, or 
of amber. The poet who describes the games of 
Carinus, in the character of a shepherd attracted 
to the capital by the fame of their magnificence, 
affirms that the nets designed as a defense against 
the wild beasts were of gold wire ; that the por¬ 
ticoes were gilded, and that the belt or circle 
which divided the several ranks of the spectators 
from each other, was studded with a precious 
mosaic of beautiful stones. 

Collar, the neckband of a coat, cloak, 
gown, or other garment, either standing 
or rolled over. Separate bands or ruffs 
of muslin, linen, lace, or fur have been 


COLLEGE—COLLIER 


known for centuries. Various decorative 
collars are a part of the insignia or rega¬ 
lia of certain orders. Collars of a partic¬ 
ular pattern are worn as a mark of dig¬ 
nity by knights, bishops, and others of 
rank. A hempen collar is a sorry jest for 
the hangman’s rope. The detachable linen 
shirt collar is said to be an American in¬ 
vention, first made at Troy, New York. 
The manufacture of Troy collars was be¬ 
gun in 1829 by Ebenezer Brown. De¬ 
tachable cuffs were made as early as 1845, 
and the “Troy Laundry” grew up as a 
collateral branch of business. At first the 
maker got on by cutting one collar at a 
time with a pair of scissors and making it 
by hand. Some of the steps in the ad¬ 
vancement of the business that may be 
mentioned are the cutting of a pile of cloth 
of many thicknesses at one operation; the 
use of sewing machines for stitching; and 
the introduction of buttonhole machines. 
The business has grown so large that it 
would now be an impossibility to do the 
work by hand. The making of collars and 
cuffs is the most highly centralized indus¬ 
try in the United States. Nine-tenths 
of American collars and cuffs are made 
in the city of Troy and less than one per 
cent are made outside of the state of New 
York. According to the last census the 
industry employs 17,115 people, who draw 
wages to the amount of $5,658,969, an¬ 
nually, and make 10,086,045 dozens of 
collars and cuffs each year, worth $15,- 
769,132. See Laundry. 

College, in educational usage a word of 
varied application but designating an in¬ 
stitution of learning in advance of second¬ 
ary schools. The word college is Latin 
and means a body of colleagues. The 
collegium of Rome was very like what we 
call now a corporation, and might exist 
for purposes of trade, religion, politics, etc. 
The name was applied at an early date to 
associations of teachers and students drawn 
together by common interests and common 
pursuits. Out of this has grown the mod¬ 
ern application of the term, but as a result 
of differing conditions the institutions of 
learning to which the name is given vary 
greatly in different countries. Quite dis¬ 
tinctive, and of special interest, are Ameri¬ 


can colleges. The early colleges, of which 
Harvard was the first, were governed by 
corporations, or bodies of trustees who re¬ 
ceived their charters from the king. After 
the adoption of the American Constitution 
these charters were granted by legislative 
act. Up to the close of the Civil War the 
four years’ course offered by most colleges, 
including many subjects now studied in 
secondary schools, consisted of a single set 
of prescribed studies leading to one degree, 
that of bachelor of arts. Today better pre¬ 
paratory schools have enabled colleges to 
advance their entrance requirements, and 
to offer several different courses and more 
extended curriculums. There has been a 
growing tendency to increase the number of 
elective studies also. The greater number 
of colleges grant the degrees of bachelor 
of science and bachelor of literature, as 
well as that of bachelor of arts. Some also 
grant the master’s degree for additional 
work. 

There are a few state colleges whose in¬ 
come is derived from taxation. The ma¬ 
jority of our colleges, however, are private 
corporations relying on endowments, many 
being under the auspices of some religious 
denomination. 

See University; Oxford; Secondary 
Schools. 

Collie. See Dog. 

Collier, Jeremy (1650-1726), an Eng¬ 
lish bishop. Collier was known in his 
own time as a bold political writer, but 
the work whose influence was greatest and 
has been most lasting was entitled A Short 
View of the Immorality and Profaneness 
of the English Stage. This pamphlet was 
an attack upon the writings of Wycherley, 
Congreve, Dryden, and others. It was the 
first step in the purification, not only of 
the drama, but of all lighter literature. 
Written with both wit and force, it was 
widely read, and received the support of 
the moral and thoughtful, although it met, 
naturally enough, with opposition. Dry¬ 
den himself gracefully acknowledged its 
justice. 

I shall say less of Mr. Collier, because in 
many things he has taxed me justly; and I have 
pleaded guilty to all thoughts and expressions 
of mine which can be truly argued of obscenity. 


COLLINS—COLOGNE 


profaneness, or immorality, and retract them. If 
he be my enemy, let him triumph; if he be my 
friend, as I have given him no personal occasion 
to be otherwise, he will be glad of my repent¬ 
ance.—Dryden, Prejace to Fables. 

Collins, William Wilkie ( 1 8 2 4- 

1889), a London novelist. His father was 
a landscape painter of good repute. The 
son studied law, but wrote stories. The 
Moonstone is perhaps the best. Arma¬ 
dale, A New Magdalen, The Woman in 
White, and The Dead Secret , are others 
which have been very popular. Several 
of these were published in American mag¬ 
azines before appearing in book form, and 
it is said brought their author immense 
sums of money. Few novelists have en¬ 
joyed a wider popularity in their own day 
than did Collins. His novels can never 
be regarded as great, however. He lacks 
the power of making fiction appear as 
reality. His characters are often unnat¬ 
ural and seem more like actors playing 
their parts on a stage than like live men 
and women. For skill in inventing and 
elaborating intricate plots, Collins is un¬ 
equalled. 

Collodion. See Cellulose. 

Colocynth, a plant of the squash or 
gourd family. It is known also as colo- 
quintida, bitter apple, and, by botanists, 
as Cucumis Colocynthis. The plant springs 
from a perennial root. The foliage re¬ 
sembles that of the cucumber. Like the 
melon, squash, pumpkin, cucumber, and 
other members of the family, the colocynth 
produces two kinds of flowers, one bear¬ 
ing stamens, the other bearing pistils. The 
fruit resembles an orange in size and col¬ 
or. The rind is thick, light, and spongy. 
The pulp is exceedingly bitter. There are 
from 200 to 300 seeds in each fruit. In 
time of need the Arabs use the seed for 
food. A coarse oil is pressed from the 
seeds. The bitter pulp is peeled, freed 
from seeds, and dried. In this form it 
is the colocynth of the druggist. It is a 
drastic purgative, of which an herbalist’s 
book of the eleventh century says: “For 
stirring of the inwards, take the inward 
neshness of the fruit, without the kernels, 
by weight of two pennies; give it, pound¬ 
ed in lithe beer, to be drunk; it stirreth 


the inwards.” In medicine colocynth is 
given usually with aloes and other drugs. 
The commercial article is obtained from 
Spain and Asia Minor. The colocynth 
ranges from the Cape Verde Islands, 
through Mediterranean Africa and the 
Grecian Archipelago and Asia Minor, as 
far east as Ceylon and India. 

Cologne, ko-lon', the largest city on 
the Rhine. It is situated on the west 
bank of the river in the province of Prus¬ 
sia. The site is about 130 feet above the 
sea level. Ancient walls in the form of a 
crescent, with the two ends resting on the 
river, have been leveled and turned into 
a series of fine boulevards. A series of 
fortifications has been constructed in a sim¬ 
ilar semicircle a little farther out, mak¬ 
ing Cologne one of the most strongly for¬ 
tified places in the German Empire. Its 
principal suburb lies on the east bank of 
the river, with which it is connected by a 
long iron bridge, forty-seven feet above 
the surface of the river, carrying both rail¬ 
road trains and ordinary traffic. The river 
is also crossed by means of an interesting 
bridge of boats. This bridge rests on boats 
anchored in the stream. The boats in a 
central section of the bridge are provided 
with engines and paddle wheels. When 
a raft of timber from the Black Forest, 
or a steamer, desires to pass, this section 
of the bridge is detached and steams out 
of the way. When the river is clear, it 
returns and is locked in place, permitting 
the resumption of traffic. 

The city is of ancient origin. When 
first known it was a town of the Ubii, 
a German tribe. About 51 A. D. it be¬ 
came a colony or colonia of the Romans, 
whence its name. During the Middle 
Ages it was one of the most influential 
and wealthy cities of the Hanseatic 
League, carrying on an immense trade with 
England in wheat, wine, and beer. It 
was celebrated at an early date for manu¬ 
factures, still maintained on an extensive 
scale. Sugar, confectionery, tobacco, malt 
liquors, mineral waters, vinegar, candles, 
starch, soap, woolen goods, and the cele¬ 
brated perfume known as eau de cologne, 
or Cologne water, are specialties. These 
give the city a high commercial standing. 


COLOMBIA 


The archbishop of Cologne was one of 
the seven electors who were privileged to 
select the head of the Holy Roman Em¬ 
pire, the theoretical successors of Charle¬ 
magne. A museum of antiquities contains 
a vast number of drawings, gems, carvings, 
remains of sculpture, coins, specimens of 
pottery, and stained glass, dating from 
the Middle Ages. The town hall in which 
the merchants of the Hanseatic League 
used to meet is one of the most interesting 
in Europe. 

Several churches would attract attention, 
were it not for the Cologne Cathedral, 
the pride of the city, the greatest Gothic 
edifice in Europe. The general plan is 
an imitation of that of Amiens, France. 
It is built in the form of a cross. The 
top or front end, called the choir, lies 
toward the river. The nave or long part 
extends to the west. This cathedral takes 
the place of older edifices. The corner¬ 
stone was laid in August, 1248. The 
last capstone was set in place August, 
1880, 632 years later. For centuries, 1447 
to 1823, no progress was made. The en¬ 
tire edifice is built of light colored stone 
brought down the Rhine from a quarry 
on the Drachenfels. The choir was built 
first. The greater part of the building 
was erected during the nineteenth century, 
at an expense of $4,500,000. The total 
length is 444 feet; breadth of nave, 201 
feet; length of transept—the cross por¬ 
tion—282 feet. The main walls are 150 
feet high; the height of the roof is 201 
feet; the central tower is 357 feet high. 

# The towers that flank the west entrance 
are 512 feet high, the loftiest in Europe. 
Seen from a distance this enormous mass 
of masonry looms up against the sky in a 
clear cut outline. Seen nearer, it is en¬ 
livened by a wealth of flying buttresses, 
turrets, gargoyles, galleries, cornices, and 
foliage that give the edifice an air of 
grace and beauty almost incredible. It 
is difficult to believe that stone work capa¬ 
ble of withstanding the storms of centuries 
can be made to seem so airy and delicate. 
The principal portal or doorway is 98 
feet high, and 51 feet in width. It is 
surrounded by statuary. Though of enor¬ 
mous size, the portal seems no more than 
11-15 


appropriate for so magnificent a building. 
The interior is supported by 56 pillars, the 
largest of which are ten feet in diameter. 
The choir is surrounded by seven chapels. 
The windows are glazed with stained glass, 
representing Biblical subjects. The cathe¬ 
dral bell, weighing twenty-six tons, was 
cast from cannon captured from the French. 

The city is growing rapidly, with a 
present population of 430,000. 

See Rhine; Cathedral. 

Colombia, the most northwesterly 
country of South America. Its neighbors 
are Venezuela, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, and 
the new state of Panama. The govern¬ 
ment is republican. The boundaries are in 
dispute on all sides. The area is esti¬ 
mated at 472,000 square miles, or about 
ten times that of New York. Bogota, the 
capital, is the largest city of importance. 
It is situated in the interior, on a lofty 
table-land, about 200 miles from the Pa¬ 
cific coast and about 300 miles from the 
Caribbean sea. It is 9,000 feet above the 
sea and is said to have a climate as de¬ 
lightful as Vermont in September. It is 
said to be the most beautiful city of South 
America. 

There are about 400 miles of railroad, 
reinforced by over 8,000 miles of telegraph 
lines, all owned by the public. There are 
numerous lines of steamers on the Magda¬ 
lena River. Barranquilla, at its mouth, 
is the chief port and town. The total 
population of Colombia is about 4,300,000, 
including 150,000 uncivilized Indians, and 
perhaps half as many negroes, the latter 
chiefly on the coast. The language of the 
schools and of society is Spanish. The 
influential element is of Spanish descent. 
The religion is Roman Catholic. 

Generally speaking, the country is 
mountainous. The ranges of the Andes 
run north and south with intervening val¬ 
leys. A vast territory of level land lies 
on the southeast of the Andes, about the 
head waters of the Rio Negro. Generally 
speaking, the country is not well opened 
up. The mineral possibilities are great. 
There are thirty-two emerald mines, and 
unknown treasures of gold, silver, plat¬ 
inum, copper, lead, mercury, iron, coal, 
petroleum, salt, and building stone. Co- 


COLON—COLOR 


coa, tobacco, vegetable ivory, coffee, dye 
woods, rubber, vanilla, silver, hides, meats 
bananas, and tolu are exported in consid¬ 
erable quantities. The merchants of the 
United States sell Colombia about $4,000,- 
000 worth of cotton cloth, flour, petrole¬ 
um, and provisions, and buy an equal 
amount of the productions of that country. 
The trade with England amounts to about 
the same. That of Germany and France is 
less. The metric system was introduced 
in 1857. Accounts are kept in the gold 
peso worth about one dollar. United 
States money circulates freely. 

Statistics. The following statistics 
are the latest to be had from trustworthy 
sources: 


Land area, square miles. 461,606 

Population . 5,472,000 

Bogota. 121,257 

Barranquilla. 48,907 

Cartagena. 36,632 

No. departments. 19 

Members of senate. 34 

Representatives. 92 

National revenue.$16,000,000 

Bonded indebtedness .$15,000,000 

Horses . 341,000 

Mules . 257,000 

Cattle . 2,800,000 

Sheep . 746,000 

Goats . 361,000 

Swine . 2,300,000 

Miles of railway . 509 

Miles of navigable rivers . 1,100 

Annual exports .$15,000,000 

Emerald output . $1,250,000 

Output of gold .,. $4,000,000 

Public schools . 2,987 

Pupils enrolled . 235,000 


Colon, ko-lon'. See Panama; Panama 
Canal. 

Color, in physics, a class of sensa¬ 
tions made by light on the optic nerve. 
Light consists of transverse vibrations of 
so-called “ether.” All the vibrations are 
inconceivably rapid and short, but they 
vary in rapidity and length. Sunlight 
consists of vibrations of all lengths. It 
creates the sensation known as white. 
Light falling on certain surfaces is wholly 
absorbed, none of it reaching the optic 
nerve. This sensation, or lack of sensa¬ 
tion, is known as black. White and black 
are not regarded as colors. If white sun¬ 
light be caused to pass through a prism, 
the waves are sorted or grouped, or, better 


yet, arranged in order of shortness and 
frequency. 

No doubt there are waves that are too 
short and too frequent to create a sensa¬ 
tion on the nerve of the human eye. For 
aught we know, the eye of beast or insect 
or bird may experience delicate sensations 
of color unknown to man. However that 
may be, the shortest and most rapid waves 
known to the human eye are called violet 
rays. We are virtually certain that there 
are light waves too long, too slow, to ex¬ 
cite the optic nerve. It may be that cer¬ 
tain animals see light that our more deli¬ 
cate optic nerve cannot detect, but, be that 
as it may, the longest and slowest waves 
that are noticeable to the human eye are 
known as red waves. 

Between the extremes of violet and red 
there may be an imperceptible graduation. 
The eye recognizes an almost infinite num¬ 
ber of colors, shades, and tints, but seven 
seemingly distinct colors attract particular 
attention. If a ray of white light be de¬ 
composed by a prism into a band of col¬ 
ored light known as the color spectrum, 
the eye recognizes seven unmistakable col¬ 
ors — violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, 
orange, and red. The initials of these 
spectrum colors spell vibgyor. 

The seven colors of the spectrum are 
called popularly the primary colors, but 
the term is used otherwise by scientists. 
It has been found, for instance, that yel¬ 
low of the spectrum may be resolved into 
red and green, and that spectral red and 
green, combined, form yellow. Spectral 
red, green, and violet cannot be resolved 
into other colors. They are called, there¬ 
fore, the primary spectral colors. In the 
case of pigments—coloring materials—it 
is found that blue is a primary color. As 
we deal with pigment colors, rather than 
spectral colors, red, green, and blue are 
considered the primary colors. 

If the primary colors of the spectrum 
be painted on a disk, a sector to each color, 
and the disk be rotated rapidly, the colors 
blend into a white or gray. Colors 
that blend to form white or gray are 
called complementary; thus the primary 
colors are complementary. The term is ap¬ 
plied more frequently, however, to a pair 

























COLOR BLINDNESS 


of colors that blend to produce white or 
gray. Such pairs of spectral colors are 
red and green-blue, orange and blue,, yel¬ 
low and indigo-blue, green-yellow and vio¬ 
let. In mixing dyes, however, it is found 
that blue and yellow are complementary. 
A color darker than standard is called a 
shade; a color lighter than standard, a 
tint. Thus we have a standard blue, and a 
series of shades of blue, and a second 
series of tints of blue. At one time, it 
was held that an eye for color was dis¬ 
tressed by placing any but complementary 
colors together. The modern milliner, 
however, claims that, by selecting the 
proper shades or tints, any colors may be 
combined without offending correct taste. 

The analogy between harmony in color 
and harmony in music is close. The wave 
length of red is about double the wave 
length of violet. Color bears the relation to 
light that pitch bears to sound! Violet 
is an octave higher than red in the scale 
of colors. The visible colors comprise 
but an octave. The waves shorter than 
violet are known as ultra-violet; those 
longer than red are known as infra-red. 
The entire scale from the lowest infra-red 
to the highest ultra-violet is perhaps seven 
light octaves. 

The following table gives the standard 
wave lengths. The unit is the micron, or 
1/1000 of a millimeter. 


Ultra-violet (invisible) .180000 

Violet .396800 

Indigo .429300 

Blue .486151 

Light green .'.527052 

Yellow .589618 

Orange .656307 

Red .688411 

Dark red .762131 

Infra-red (invisible) .30.000000 


As stated elsewhere, the list of colors is 
well nigh endless. Chapman’s color chart 
for the identification of the plumage of 
birds contains thirty colors. 

A red wall surface is a surface that ab¬ 
sorbs all other rays and reflects red rays. 
A red pane of glass in a stained window 
is a pane that stops all other rays and 
allows the red rays to pass through. 
Green goggles stop all but green light, 
the color that is easiest on the eye. Wall 


papers should be chosen not only for har¬ 
mony of color, but with reference to the 
demand for light. Yellow reflects three 
times as much light as dark brown. If a 
room be too light, vermilion and green and 
black will soften the glare; if a room or 
passage be deficient in light, yellows and 
white are to be preferred. 

The power of various colors and sur¬ 
faces to reflect light is shown in the follow¬ 
ing table, which gives the percentage of 
the total incident light that is reflected: 


Mirror . 95 

White blotting paper. 82 

Chrome yellow . 62 

Orange . 50 

Yellow . 40 

Pink . 36 

Emerald green . 18 

Dark brown . 13 

Vermilion . 12 

Black paper,. 0.5 

Deep chocolate . 0.46 

Black velvet . 0.4 


Students of nerve diseases have investi¬ 
gated the effect of color. The name of 
chromatography has been given to the new 
science based on the effect of color on 
the human body. It has been found that 
red is an excitant; that orange and yellow 
also excite, but in a less degree. Violet, 
indigo, and blue have a calming effect. 
Green excites a feeling of pleasure and 
then a sense of peace. According to the con¬ 
clusions of the scientists, the various colors 
affect blonde people more than they do 
brunettes. Fleshy patients are more sus¬ 
ceptible to the effects of colored lights than 
are spare patients. Nervous people should 
avoid living in rooms papered or draped 
with red. Violet, green, and blue are 
colors to be preferred. 

See Smallpox; Cancer; Light; Fin- 
sen. 

Color Blindness, a defect in vision, 
either an insensibility to color at all or an 
inability to recognize certain ones. Red 
blindness or green blindness are the most 
common, in either case those colors appear¬ 
ing as yellow. The explanation is that 
those portions of the retina which respond 
to the wave-lengths of certain colors are 
either absent or diseased. Continual 
straining of the eyes in the effort to dis¬ 
tinguish red and green lights on the part 
























COLORADO 


of trainmen sometimes leads to insensibility 
to these colors. A careful series of tests 
with colored worsteds must be undergone 
by any one wishing to enter the railway 
service where the interpreting of signals is 
necessary. The discovery of color blind¬ 
ness is said to have been made by John 
Dalton, the famous chemist, who was him¬ 
self a victim, which led to this defect being 
called Daltonism. 

Colorado, a state of the American Un¬ 
ion. It was admitted in 1876, and is 
known as the Centennial State. It lies 
four square, and is bounded by four 
straight lines. It is included between the 
37th and 41st parallels. The eastern line 
follows the 102d meridian, and the west 
line the 109th meridian. The northern 
boundary is shorter therefore than the 
southern boundary. Colorado and Wyo¬ 
ming are the only states in the Union that 
are bounded by four straight lines. The 
area is 103,925 square miles. 

The Plain Region. That eastern third 
of the state, or that part east of the 
Rocky Mountains, is a part of the great 
treeless plain of North America. It is 
divided into two sections. The northern part 
lies in the upper valley of the south Platte, 
the southern, in the valley of the Arkan¬ 
sas. The soil is fertile, but insufficiently 
supplied with moisture. Dust blanket cul¬ 
tivation has done much for the country. 
The waters of the mountains have been 
utilized to convert large areas in the val¬ 
leys into alfalfa meadows and orchards, 
but the supply is limited. The state has 
but 280 square miles of water. Large 
areas are still waiting for man to devise 
a way of obtaining water, all that is needed 
to render them enormously productive. 
The lowest point in this section is 3,047 
feet above sea level. 

The Mountain Region. The west¬ 
ern two-thirds of the state is in the heart 
of the Rocky Mountains. There are 200 
peaks over 13,000 feet high, including the 
highest in the United States, if we except 
Mt. Whitney of California. One of the most 
noted is Pike’s Peak in full view of Den¬ 
ver. The Main Rockies traverse the state 
from north to south in two lines or ranges 
that separate and approach again, inclos¬ 


ing great valleys shaped like links in a 
chain. Named from the north, they are 
North Park, Middle Park, South Park, 
and San Luis Park. South Park, the 
smallest of the four, is 8,000 feet high, 
and is as large as Rhode Island. In ad¬ 
dition to these, there are many smaller 
parks to the westward, some of them as 
large as an ordinary Illinois county. 
Among these are Monument Park and the 
Garden of the Gods. The latter is near 
Colorado Springs, and is so called from 
the countless number of water-worn monu¬ 
mental pillars. 

River Systems. Colorado shares hon¬ 
ors with Wyoming and Minnesota as the 
source of the head waters of river sys¬ 
tems. The Platte and the Arkansas have 
been mentioned. They carry the waters of 
eastern Colorado to the Mississippi. The 
waters of the western section go by way 
of the Grand Canon to the Gulf of Cali¬ 
fornia and the Pacific Ocean. San Luis 
Park is drained by way of the Rio Grande 
into the Gulf of Mexico. 

Scenery. Colorado is famous as a 
scenic state. Towering mountain peaks, 
terraces, gorges, and canons a mile deep, 
mesas, waterfalls, sculptured rocks, fertile 
valleys, and upland forests give a variety 
of impressive scenery. Compared with Colo¬ 
rado, Switzerland is a mere suggestion. The 
air is bracing and unsurpassed, whether for 
pleasure or for health. The mountains 
of Colorado are now the greatest inland 
resort in the world. Few parts of the 
world give the observer a larger idea of 
the greatness of the universe. 

Minerals. The mineral wealth of the 
state is beyond computation. In gold, sil¬ 
ver, zinc, and lead, its resources exceed 
that of any other state in the Union. Its 
iron wealth is supposed to be exceeded only 
by that of Minnesota. Its coal is second 
only to that of Pennsylvania. In copper 
the state ranks third. Porcelain, clay, 
mercury, platinum, building stone, petro¬ 
leum, and gas are found in apparently 
inexhaustible quantities. The annual prod¬ 
uct of the mines and smelters of the 
state is not for from $100,000,000. 

Industries. As might be expected the 
leading manufactures of the state are the 



EASTERN COLORADO INDUSTRIES 
























































































•• 








































COLORADO RIVER 


/ 


smelting and refining of ores, making of 
steel rails, and foundry products. With tim¬ 
ber and iron at hand, a carbuilding in¬ 
dustry has grown up. Flour milling, meat 
packing, and brewing are large industries. 

Agriculture. About two-thirds of the 
total area of the state is available for graz¬ 
ing and farming. About three-fourths of 
the lands under crop, or over 1,600,000 
acres, are irrigated. The largest irrigated 
tracts are in the vicinity of Greeley and in 
San Luis Park. It is thought that the ir¬ 
rigated area can be more than doubled. 
Over $10,000,000 worth of alfalfa hay is 
produced on these lands. Wheat, potatoes, 
and sugar beets of superior quality are 
now important crops. Peach, pear, and 
plum, and especially apple orchards are 
well established in the irrigated valleys. 
The Arkansas valley is famous for musk- 
melons, which are shipped in carloads to 
the city markets. In 1904, 1182 cars of 
Rocky Ford cantaloupes were shipped. 

Stock raising and dairying are impor¬ 
tant and growing interests. The long¬ 
horned Texas cattle that took care of them¬ 
selves in winter have given way largely 
to improved breeds. The production of 
milk, butter, and cheese has kept pace with 
the increase in the production of hay. 

Education. An excellent system of 
public instruction includes common schools, 
high schools, a normal school at Greeley, 
a school of mining at Golden, an agricul¬ 
tural school at Fort Collins, and a univer¬ 
sity at Boulder. Money is plentiful and is 
spent for schools ungrudgingly. 

The Franchise, Population, Etc. 
Women vote on an equality with men and 
are eligible to all offices. Many are county 
superintendents of schools. The popula¬ 
tion in 1900 was 539,700, very largely of 
American birth. A map of the state 
shows that the counties, especially in the 
western part, are as irregular in outline as 
the state is regular. The boundaries fol¬ 
low the natural mountain ranges that sur¬ 
round the parks. A number of county 
names are suggestive. Boulder, Cheyenne, 
Custer, Delta, El Paso, Kit Carson, Mesa, 
Mineral, Park, Pueblo, and Yuma are far 
more expressive than the names of presi¬ 
dents or railroad magnates never identified 
with the locality. The metroDolis of the 


state is Denver, reserved for a separate 
article. Pueblo, Leadville, and Cripple 
Creek, are mining towns; Colorado 
Springs and Boulder are health resorts. 
Pueblo is called the Pittsburg of the West. 
Denver is the capital. 

Statistics. The following statistics 
are the latest to be had from trustworthy 
sources: 


Land area, in square miles. 103,925 

Population (1910) . 799,024 

Denver . 213,381 

Pueblo . 44,395 

Colorado Springs. 29,078 

Trinidad . 10,204 

Boulder . ^ . 9,539 

Fort Collins . 8,210 

Greeley . 8,179 

Number of counties. 59 

Members of state senate . 35 

Representatives . 65 

Salary of governor . $5,000 

U. S. representatives. 4 

Presidential electors. 6 

Assessed valuation of property.$414,885,770 

Total indebtedness . $1,130,300 

Corn, bushels . 3,267,000 

Wheat, bushels. 8,721,000 

Oats, bushels . 7,448,000 

Wool, pounds. 9,860,000 

Horses . 280,000 

Mules . 12,000 

Milk cows . 161,000 

Other cattle . 1,500,000 

Sheep . 1,729,000 

Swine . 248,000 

Acres of sugar beets . 90,000 

Railways, miles. 5,360 

Manufacturing establishments . 1,606 

Capital invested.$107,600,000 

Operatives . 21,813 

Raw material . $63,000,000 

Output of manufactured goods ... .$i00,000,000 

Gold mined . $22,800,000 

Silver mined . $5,400,000 

Copper, pounds . 14,000,000 

Coal mined, tons . 9,634,900 

Iron ore mined, long tons. 10,176 

Petroleum, barrels . 379,653 

Mineral products . $71,000,000 

Quarry products . $869,000 

Teachers in public schools . 5.500 

Pupils enrolled . 162,660 

Percentage of male teachers. 20 

Average annual expenditure per pu¬ 
pil . $50.14 


Colorado River, one of the great 
streams of North America. It is formed 
by the junction of the Green, whose head 
waters rise in Wyoming, and the Grand, 
whose head waters rise in Colorado. It flows 














































COLORADO SPRINGS—COLT 


southwesterly through Utah, Arizona, 
Nevada and Mexico, receives the Gila, 
and empties into the Gulf of California. 
The Green emerges from a series of can¬ 
ons, 1,500 feet deep. The main Colorado 
passes through four canons, the Marble 
Canon, 60 miles in length and 3,600 feet 
deep; the Grand Canon, 200 miles long 
and from 4,000 to 7,000 feet deep—the 
greatest canon in the world; the Call- 
ville Canon, 7,000 feet deep, with terraced 
cliffs piled with the ruins of cities; and, 
lastly, the Black Canon, 25' miles long 
and 1,000 to 1,500 feet deep. The lower 
612 miles of the river, including the Black 
Canon, are navigable for steamers as far 
as Callville, Nevada. 

These great canons have been cut by the 
current. Particles of sand in the swiftly 
running water have chipped off the sand¬ 
stone like chisels, and worn channels, in 
places a mile and a half deep. Clear wa¬ 
ter free from grit has little erosive or scour¬ 
ing power. Many other rivers in the world 
have worn still deeper channels; but their 
cliffs have been worn down by rain, so that, 
instead of a narrow gorge, a wide valley 
has been formed. The wonderful canons 
of the Colorado are in a well nigh rainless 
region. The cliffs stand much as when 
left by the current of the river. To those 
fond of statistics, it may be said that 750,- 
000,000,000,000 cubic feet of rock have 
been chiseled out and carried away by the 
Colorado River. At the rate at which 
sediment is now carried by the current, 
10,000,000 years would be required to do 
the work. 

Of late the Lower Colorado has given 
the Southern Pacific Railway trouble by 
leaving its banks and flooding a large, 
low area, known as Salton Desert. The 
mouth of the river is a vast mud delta in 
which the Indian sows his September seed. 

See Grand Canyon; Salton Sea; Ir¬ 
rigation. 

Colorado Springs. Thousands of 
tourists visit the city of Colorado Springs 
every year for the superb mountain scenery 
amidst which it is located, going from there 
to the medicinal springs at Manitou near¬ 
by. The city is sixty-five miles south of Den¬ 
ver, and has an altitude of 5,982 feet. Colo¬ 


rado College is located there and the State 
Asylum for the Deaf, Dumb and Blind. It 
is a railroad center but has no manufactures. 
It is perhaps the most noted resort on 
the continent for those suffering from 
pulmonary complaints. One of the largest 
fraternal insurance companies has success¬ 
fully maintained here for several years a 
camp for its members afflicted with tuber¬ 
culosis. The population in 1910 was 29,078. 

Colossus, in ancient art, a statue of 
great magnitude, whence our adjective 
colossal. The most celebrated colossus of 
antiquity, the existence of which has been 
doubted, however, was a bronze statue 
of the sun-god at the entrance of 
the harbor at Rhodes. The work occupied 
the sculptor twelve years. It was designed 
to serve as a lighthouse. It stood 70 cubits, 
or about 105 feet high. According to an 
unfounded tradition this statue straddled 
the harbor, so that ships passed in and out 
between its legs. It was overthrown by 
an earthquake 234 A. D. In 653 it was 
sold by the Arabs for $260,000 to a Jew 
for old metal. A colossal statue of Zeus 
in the Parthenon was 60 feet high. One 
of Athena was 39 feet. The largest statue 
in the United States is that of Liberty 
Enlightening the World, 151 feet high, on 
Bedloe Island, in the harbor of New York. 
See Liberty; Bingen; Mennon. 

Colt, Samuel (1814-1862), an Ameri¬ 
can inventor. He was educated in his fa¬ 
ther’s cotton mill at Hartford, but went 
to sea at an early day and became inter¬ 
ested in firearms. Starting with an idea 
of the sixteenth century, he perfected a 
pattern for the first really practical pistol 
having a revolving barrel with a number 
of bores. Colonel Colt patented his revol¬ 
ver in 1835 and commenced its manufac¬ 
ture at Hartford. He built up one of the 
largest firearm factories in the world. In 
the earlier patterns the entire barrel re¬ 
volved. Later he devised a plan of a breech 
having a short revolving cylinder, usually 
of six chambers, with but a single barrel. 
At first the cylinder was turned by hand. 
Later it was connected by a revolving mech¬ 
anism with the hammer, so that in cocking 
the pistol a new chamber came into line 
with the barrel. See Fire Arms. 


COLUMBIA—COLUMBINE 


Columbia, a large river'’ on the Pa¬ 
cific coast of North America. Its rivals 
are the Yukon and the Colorado. It is 
credited with a total length of 1,400 
miles, and a basin area of 300,000 square 
miles. Through its tributaries, including 
the Kootenai, the Clarke, and the Snake, 
it drains the greater part of Oregon, Wash¬ 
ington, Idaho, and a part of British Co¬ 
lumbia, Montana, and western Wyoming. 
On the south, it drains the borders of 
Utah and Nevada. Its head waters mingle 
with those of the Fraser, the Saskatchewan, 
the Missouri, and the Colorado. There are 
divides where the tourist can throw a dip¬ 
per of water one way into the drainage 
basin of the Atlantic, or the other way into 
the drainage basin of the Pacific. The 
mouth of the river was entered by Captain 
Gray in 1792. The valley was explored by 
the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1805. 
The mouth of the river forms an estuary 
separating Oregon and Washington. It is 
about thirty-five miles long, and from two 
to seven miles in width. A sandbar at the 
ocean entrance has been scoured out 
through the construction of government jet¬ 
ties. The national government has spent also 
about $4,000,000 in constructing a canal 
and lock at the Cascades, about 200 miles 
from the ocean. A similar work is under 
way at the Dalles, 150 miles farther up. 
It is estimated that these improvements 
will open up over 2,000 miles of naviga¬ 
ble waters to steamers from the Pacific. 
The Columbia has long been noted for its 
salmon fisheries. Half a million cans of 
the best salmon in the world are put up on 
its banks annually. See Cascades ; Port¬ 
land ; Salmon; Oregon; Washington. 

Columbia, the capital of South Caro¬ 
lina and county seat of Richland County. 
It was devasted by fire on Sherman’s 
march to the sea in 1865, but by 1910 had 
a population of 26,319 with many hand¬ 
some buildings, among them the capitol 
and other state buildings, a hospital, and a 
public library. It is the seat of a number 
of preparatory schools and colleges, three 
of which are for negroes. The University 
of South Carolina is also located there. 

Columbia University, an institution 
of higher learning in New York City. 


It was founded by the colonial authorities, 
the Church of England taking the lead. 
The first money was raised by public lot¬ 
tery. The first principal assumed office 
July 17, 1754, in the schoolhouse belong¬ 
ing to Trinity Church. He had eight stu¬ 
dents. A royal charter was granted on 
October 31st of the same year, the insti¬ 
tution taking the name of King’s College, 
providing that the balance of control 
should rest with the Episcopal church. 
This clause was later stricken out. As a 
matter of fact, King’s College was noted 
for catholicity of spirit from the very be¬ 
ginning. When the Revolutionary War 
broke out the students pulled down the 
statue of King George that stood on the 
campus, and entered Washington’s army. 
May 1, 1774, college work was resumed, 
the legislature of New York having 
changed the name to Columbia College. 
Columbia University, as the institution is 
now known, consists of faculties of law, of 
medicine, of philosophy, of political sci¬ 
ence, of pure science, and applied science. 
It has also a college of physicians and sur¬ 
geons, Barnard College for women, a 
school of mines, and a teachers’ college, 
the latter a high-rank professional school 
for teachers. The governing body of the 
university consists of twenty-four trustees 
who fill vacancies in their own member¬ 
ship. Columbia Library contains one-third 
of a million bound volumes. The build¬ 
ing itself is a gift from Ex-President Low, 
who expended over a million dollars in its 
erection. There are between 5,000 and 
6,000 students in attendance. 

Columbian Exposition. See World’s 
Columbian Exposition. 

Columbine, a fragrant honey-bear¬ 
ing flower of the buttercup family. This 
delightful flower is often called a honey¬ 
suckle, a shrubby plant to which it is not 
related. The American columbine blooms 
in May and June. The flowers grow on a 
woodland perennial herb two feet high. 
The five petals are, all alike, prolonged 
backward into straight honey-bearing 
spurs. The flowers are of a handsome 
delicate scarlet outside and yellow inside. 
They are pendant or nodding at first, but 
straighten up when they go to seed. The 


COLUMBINE—COLUMBUS 


Rocky Mountain columbine has incurved 
spurs. It is blue or purplish, or even white. 
The garden columbine of Europe is the 
flower to which Jean Ingelow says: 

O Columbine! open your folded wrapper, 

Where two twin turtle-doves dwell. 

The Scotch call these flowers “auld la¬ 
dies’ mutchie,” or caps. 

Admirers of the columbine have urged 
its adoption as our national flower. They 
claim that the common name is derived 
from columba, a dove, the bird of peace; 
that it suggests Columbus, the discoverer 
of America; that its Latin name, aquilegia, 
is derived from the name of the eagle, the 
bird of America; that the flower would 
lend itself readily to artistic designs; that 
the shape of the flower suggests a liberty 
cap; and, finally, that the columbine is 
widely dispersed and universally beloved 
by children and all lovers of flowers. 

Our columbine is at all times and in all places 
one of the most exquisitely beautiful of flowers; 
yet one spring day, when I saw it growing out of 
a small seam on the face of a great lichen- 
covered wall of rock, where no soil or mould 
was visible,—a jet of foliage and color shooting 
out of a black line on the face of a perpendicular 
mountain wall and rising up like a tiny foun¬ 
tain, its drops turning to flame-colored jewels 
that hung and danced in the air against the 
gray rocky surface,—its beauty became something 
magical and audacious.—Burroughs, River by. 

Columbine. See Harlequin. 

Columbus, the capital city of the 
state of Ohio. It is situated on the Scioto 
River, at the geographical center of the 
state. The site is a level river plain. The 
general plan of the city is that of a Mal¬ 
tese cross, extending east and west seven 
miles; north and south, eight miles. These 
arms are traversed by two main thorough¬ 
fares, High Street and Broad Street, inter¬ 
secting each other at right angles in the cen¬ 
ter of the city. They are planted with ave¬ 
nues of shade trees. At their intersection 
is a magnificent park of ten acres, called 
Capitol Square. The capitol building it¬ 
self is a two-story structure surrounded by 
a colonnade of Doric columns, extending 
from the pavement to the roof. It is built 
of native gray limestone, and cost in the 
neighborhood of $3,000,000. With addi¬ 
tions, it covers nearly three acres. The 
site of Columbus was selected in 1810; the 


city was surveyed in 1812; and the capital 
was removed thither from Chilicothe in 
1816. Among other public institutions, the 
state university, a state hospital for the in¬ 
sane, schools for deaf mutes, blind, and 
imbecile, as well as the state penitentiary, 
are located here. 

Though designed as a residence city, Co¬ 
lumbus has developed into a large manu¬ 
facturing and distributing center. There are 
eighteen railroads. One of the largest car¬ 
riage factories in the United States is lo¬ 
cated here. In all about $40,000,000 is in¬ 
vested in steel plants, iron works, and the 
manufacture of carriages, automobiles, 
trucks, cars, watches, furniture, cash regis¬ 
ters, farm implements, hosiery, medicines, 
and other articles of merchandise. The 
annual output is considerably over $100,- 
000,000. Columbus lies within the gas 
belt. The city is piped. Natural gas is 
used for heating, cooking, and manufactur¬ 
ing. An abundant supply of soft coal is 
found in the vicinity. The present popu¬ 
lation is 181,511. 

Columbus, Christopher (1 4 4 6 ( ?) - 

1506), the discoverer of America. He was 
born at Genoa in 1446 and died at Vallado¬ 
lid, Spain, May 21, 1506. The Italians 
called him Cristoforo Colombo; the Span¬ 
iards, Christobal Colon. His father was a 
Genoese wool comber. Beyond the facts 
that he received a good education, was fond 
of mathematics, geography, and travel, and 
that he went to sea early in life, little is 
known of young Colombo. In 1470 he mar¬ 
ried a sea captain’s daughter at Lisbon, 
then the most enterprising seaport in the 
world. Columbus appears to have inherited 
a lot of charts and instruments belonging 
to her father. He mastered books of travel, 
studied the various theories of the shape 
of the earth and investigated the traditions 
of new lands in the west. 

The Turks had intrenched themselves 
about the eastern end of the Mediterra¬ 
nean, cutting off former lines of traffic by 
ship and caravan with India and the far 
east. The southern route by way of the 
Cape of Good Hope was unknown. The 
ships of the Mediterranean lay rotting at 
the wharves. Merchant princes had empty 
warehouses. People long accustomed to the 



COLUMBUS 


products of the east went without. The 
profitable commerce of centuries, thus in¬ 
terrupted, was seeking new lines of travel, 
not controlled by the Turks. The Portu¬ 
guese emboldened by the mariner’s com¬ 
pass, lately come into use, were seeking a 
passage around the southern end of Africa. 
Columbus was of the opinion that a route 
directly westward would lead to India. 
Filled with the great idea, he made appli¬ 
cation to his native city, Genoa, to John 
II of Portugal, and to Henry VII of Eng¬ 
land for money and ships to make a trial 
voyage. He passed eighteen years in a 
struggle with poverty, striving to overcome 
ridicule and opposition. Finally—call it 
credulity, faith, or statesmanship—a wom¬ 
an, Isabella, queen of Spain, one of the 
most gracious personages in history, lis¬ 
tened to his plea and declared that so great 
a project should be carried out, even 
though she were obliged to pawn her jew¬ 
els to find the meatis. 

Friday, August 3, 1492, Columbus set 
sail from Palos, Spain, with three small 
ships, the Pinta, the Nina, and the Santa 
Maria. He went by way of the Canary 
Islands, where he took aboard a last sup¬ 
ply of fresh water and sailed boldly forth 
into unknown waters. Terror seized his 
sailors, and nothing but his commanding 
presence and skillful management pre¬ 
vented their throwing him overboard and 
returning home. The picture of Columbus 
—anxious, fearless, determined—explain¬ 
ing his views to his officers, watching 
every floating bit of grass or weed, but sail¬ 
ing on and on over pathless waters and un¬ 
der strange skies, is an inspiring theme. Fi¬ 
nally birds were seen, and the prows of the 
little ships w r ere turned to follow. The 
smell of growing trees seemed to be wafted 
from the west. Columbus offered a reward 
to the first to see land. He himself was 
the first to sight a twinkling light over 
the waves. At two o’clock on the morning 
of October 12th, sixty-nine days after their 
setting out, a cannon shot from the Pinta 
announced the sight of land. It is no won¬ 
der that on landing Columbus threw him¬ 
self on the ground, kissed the very earth, 
and returned thanks for the coming true of 
a lifetime of hope and prayer. Then, draw¬ 


ing his sword and raising aloft the ban¬ 
ner of Spain, he took possession of a New 
World in the joint names of Ferdinand 
and Isabella, sovereigns of Castile and 
Leon. 

The first land discovered was the island 
of San Salvador, one of the Bahama 
Islands. Columbus built a wooden fort, 
and left thirty-nine volunteers to hold it. 
He also visited Cuba and Hayti before re¬ 
turning. 

When Columbus set sail from Palos the 
courtiers jeered at his wild scheme, the 
populace wept and bewailed the fate of 
friends who should never return, and many 
a curse was hurled at the head of so hare¬ 
brained and wild an adventurer. On his re¬ 
turn the same people could not cheer loud 
enough; bells were rung; cannon thun¬ 
dered salvos of welcome. Columbus and 
his companions were conducted to their 
sovereign in procession. Indians, palm 
trees, fruits, all sorts of specimens from 
the new country were carried along in view 
of the excited people. A chair for Colum¬ 
bus was placed next the throne of the king, 
and he was invited to relate his adventures. 
There was no difficulty in getting a hearing 
from Ferdinand now. Columbus was made 
viceroy of the New World and made three 
additional voyages to explore and to locate 
forts. Believing he had found India, he 
called the region the West Indies, and the 
natives Indians. 

It would require volumes to relate the 
troubles that befell after the first flush of 
success had passed by. Envy, greed, and cal¬ 
umny assailed him. Some wanted the gold 
there might be in a new country, others 
coveted the possession of the New World. 
To Ferdinand they represented that Colum¬ 
bus designed to create and rule an inde¬ 
pendent empire beyond the sea. To Isa¬ 
bella they drew a picture of cruelty to the 
Indians. As a result orders were given. 
Columbus was sent home in chains like a 
dangerous criminal. Once face to face 
with the queen, we may believe he had no 
difficulty in clearing his good name. None 
the less, he died broken-hearted at Valla¬ 
dolid, desiring that his chains be placed in 
his coffin. According to his wish, his re¬ 
mains were transported to the city of Santo 


COLUMN—COMB 


Domingo, which his brother had founded. 
When, in 1795, the city with the island 
became a possession of France, the coffin 
of Columbus, as it was supposed, was re¬ 
moved with every sign of high honor to 
the Cathedral of Havana. In 1898, when 
Cuba was granted independence, the re¬ 
mains were taken to Spain. They now 
rest beneath the pavement of the grand 
old Cathedral of Seville. A marble slab 
bears the famous inscription, “To Castile 
and Leon, Columbus gave a new world.” 
Historical accuracy requires the addition of 
a statement to the effect that in 1877 a lead 
casket was found in the old monastery 
at Santo Domingo that is thought to contain 
the true remains of the great discoverer. 
It is believed quite generally that the body 
removed was that of his son, and that Co¬ 
lumbus still reposes at Santo Domingo, the 
resting place of his choice. 

Documents recently brought to light in 
the archives of Genoa indicate the poverty 
of the famous expedition. The great ad¬ 
miral was paid a salary of $300 a year. 
The two captains who accompanied him 
received a salary of $200 each. The mem¬ 
bers of the crew were paid at the rate of 
$2.50 a month. The fleet was worth about 
$3,000. The entire expense of discovering 
America did not exceed $7,000,—less than 
the cost of a mere salute fired nowadays 
by a battleship in honor of the president. 

Columbus was a man of pure life, a 
scholar, an enthusiast, a man of large 
views, integrity of purpose, sagacious, en¬ 
terprising, persistent, and possessed of ex¬ 
ecutive ability in no ordinary degree. He 
lived in an atmosphere of ignorance, preju¬ 
dice, and selfishness, to say nothing of 
malice and the blackest treachery. His 
life is the record of a great man, thwarted 
and denied a free hand by authority, pes¬ 
tered by petty foes, and hunted to death by 
powerful ones. The best account of his 
life and services likely to be at hand is 
to be found in John Fiske’s Discovery of 
America. 

Column. See Architecture. 

Comanche, ko-man'che, a tribe of 
American Indians belonging to the Sho¬ 
shone or Snake family. When first known 
to the whites they were living in eastern 


Colorado, where they had already obtained 
horses of Spanish stock from the southwest, 
and had become expert and daring riders. 
They were driven southward by the Sioux 
into the region lying between Santa Fe 
and Mexico. They were armed with the 
bow and arrow. Later the Comanches ob¬ 
tained firearms from the whites. They 
lived largely on the chase of the buffalo, 
from the skin of which the squaws con¬ 
structed their wigwams. There were at one 
time at least 20,000 of the tribe, perhaps 
more, as the number of warriors was es¬ 
timated at 5,000. The Spaniards had a 
knack of making peace with most Indian 
tribes; but they were at constant enmity 
with the Comanches, who bore down upon 
their settlements along the Mexican bor¬ 
ders in many a raid, killing the adults and 
carrying away the children for adoption. 
About 1816 smallpox played havoc with 
the tribe. When the railroads reached 
their country the Comanches became a per¬ 
fect scourge and gave the United States 
troops much trouble. A small remnant, 
perhaps 1,500 in all, is now located on a 
reservation in Oklahoma. See Indians; 
Apache; Miles. 

Comb, a well known instrument used 
in the care of the hair. A comb is a thin 
strip of any stiff, tough material, furnished 
with teeth. Several metal strips are set 
on a frame to make the curry comb used 
for animals. Toilet combs are straight. 
Curved combs of many shapes are used to 
hold a woman’s hair in position. The combs 
of the ancients seem to have been made 
of wood, chiefly boxwood, and later of 
ivory. Modern combs are made in a va¬ 
riety of ways. Tortoise shell is heated 
until it is plastic, when the spaces between 
the teeth are punched out. Bone combs 
are first shaped. All the teeth are then 
cut at the same time by a number of circu¬ 
lar saws running side by side on the same 
axis. Celluloid and metal combs are cast. 
Rubber combs are pressed into molds while 
soft and are afterward hardened by vul¬ 
canization. In stamping out combs mate- N 
rial is saved by having the teeth interlock. 
According to the latest statistics 34 Amer¬ 
ican comb factories employ 1,399 people, 
and pay them $572,467 a year. The annual 


COMBING—COMEDY 


output is worth nearly $2,000,000. We 
also import many combs from abroad 
where they are made cheaply. See Hair; 
Barber. 

Combing. See Carding. 

Combustion, ordinarily used as synony¬ 
mous with burning, is the union of a 
substance with oxygen, accompanied by the 
evolution of heat and light. In a wide 
sense, it may signify any chemical action 
with like result. The combination may be 
a slow one, as when phosphorus is slowly 
consumed in the air, or more violently 
when a flame is applied to it. The result, 
as far as the total amount of heat is con¬ 
cerned, is the same, the difference in tem¬ 
perature causing the light in the one case 
and not in the other. The slow invisible 
union of a substance with oxygen is called 
oxidation. The rusting of iron is a fa¬ 
miliar example. Combustion usually re¬ 
sults in a gas and a solid residue. Experi¬ 
mentation has shown that though a body 
may seem to be destroyed the matter is 
merely changed in form, for the weight of 
the resulting gas is the same as that of the 
substance burned plus the oxygen used. 

Comedy, that department of the dra¬ 
ma which appeals to the sense of the hu¬ 
morous or ridiculous. Amusement and fun 
are prominent features of comedy, and the 
outcome must be happy, or at least leave 
a pleasant impression. Horror and grief 
are elements of tragedy, and the end must 
be in a measure disastrous. In a broad 
sense, comedy includes all forms of tragi¬ 
comedy, farce, and melodrama. In a more 
restricted sense, comedy, while separated 
on the one hand from tragedy, is separated 
on the other from that which is farcical 
or grossly comical. Gloom, sadness, and so¬ 
berness are out of keeping with real come¬ 
dy; so also is the grotesque and all that is 
absurdly extravagant. A farce may be 
classed properly as low comedy. It is the 
province of comedy proper to satirize in a 
pleasing way the weaknesses of humanity, 
the follies of society, or the humorous in¬ 
cidents of life. 

As “the history of the Greek stage is 
the history of dramatic art,” we need not 
go elsewhere to look for the beginnings of 
comedy. In the Greek colony of Sicily, 


“to this day the home of spontaneous mim¬ 
icry,” it is said to have arisen. At the vin¬ 
tage festival held yearly in honor of 
Bacchus or Dionysus, the comus or proces¬ 
sion was the principal feature; the word 
comus signifying a revel continued after 
supper. The participants went about in 
carts or on foot, wearing gay costumes and 
indulging in jovial mirth, interspersed with 
jests at the expense of the onlookers. A 
song sung in these processions was called 
a comus song, or comus ode, whence the 
word comedy. Susarion, who is called the 
founder of comedy, and who lived in the 
sixth century B. C., is said to have trav¬ 
eled from place to place with a small mov¬ 
able stage, holding up to ridicule the fol¬ 
lies of the time. 

Comedy assumed definite form during the 
age of Pericles. There are three distinct 
periods of Greek comedy. The first, called 
Old Comedy, dates from the establishment 
of the democracy by Pericles. There was ’ 
a strong political tendency in Old Comedy, 
the chief butts of satire being the influ¬ 
ential men and rulers of the time. Aris¬ 
tophanes belongs to this period. His best 
comedies are The Knights, The Frogs, The 
Clouds, and The Wasps. It has been said 
that “were it not for the limitations of the 
female characters which Greek manners 
necessitated, Aristophanes would perhaps 
have been the equal of Shakespeare in com¬ 
edy.” In these old comedies, masks imi¬ 
tating the faces of individuals were worn 
frequently. Middle Comedy marks the 
time when heads were busy and tongues 
were wagging over the opposing schools 
of philosophy and rhetoric, instead of ri¬ 
val political leaders. Law forbade the 
name of a living person to be brought on 
the stage, or the face to be imitated by a 
mask; so classes, instead of individuals, be¬ 
came the objects of jest. A change also 
occurred in form. The parabasis or speech 
in which the chorus addressed the audience, 
always a feature of Old Comedy, was 
omitted in Middle Comedy. New Comedy 
was Middle Comedy matured, and corre¬ 
sponds to the comedy of modern times. 
Manners and social conditions were now 
held up to ridicule. Menander is the one 
notable name in Grecian New Comedy. 


COMEDY OF ERRORS—COMENIUS 


Among Roman writers of comedy, Terence 
and Plautus stand first. Their work was 
based on the Grecian models and contains 
little that is original. 

From ancient times until the later Mid¬ 
dle Ages, there is nothing worthy of note 
in the history of dramatic literature. When 
the drama revived it was in the' form of 
miracle plays. These miracle plays were 
presented in nearly all European countries, 
and led up to modern comedy; which would 
seem to have appeared as a result of the 
natural desire for amusement and variety. 
The miracle plays were concerned chiefly 
with religious subjects; but now and then 
some hint of comedy appeared. In Noah’s 
Flood played at Chester, a domestic quar¬ 
rel occurs before Noah’s wife can be per¬ 
suaded to enter the ark. When she has 
been pushed and pulled aboard by her chil¬ 
dren she is so enraged that she belabors 
her husband until he cries for mercy. Even 
in the Play of the Shepherds some invent¬ 
ive genius introduced a comical sheepsteal¬ 
ing scene before the song of angels informs 
the shepherds of th.e birth of Christ. 
Gradually current topics were brought into 
the dialogues, and characters from real life 
appeared on the stage. The interlude, in-' 
troduced by John Haywood to relieve the 
strain of more serious presentations, con¬ 
tained many of the elements of comedy. 

In 1540 appeared the “first play which 
bears the distinctive marks of real comedy.” 
This is Nicholas Udall’s Ralph Royster 
Doyster. It may be said to mark the be¬ 
ginning of modern English drama. Shakes¬ 
peare is a master of comedy as he is of 
tragedy. Much Ado about Nothing and 
As You Like It are two favorites among 
his thirteen comedies. Other names wor¬ 
thy of mention as writers of English com¬ 
edy are Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletch¬ 
er, Congreve, Goldsmith, and Sheridan. 

In other countries the origin of comedy 
has been similar to that in England, al¬ 
though different influences have given it 
different characteristics. France produced 
comedies much earlier than England, al¬ 
though the French names most noted in 
comedy, those of Corneille and Moliere, do 
not appear until after Shakespeare’s time. 

In more recent times, comedy has crowd¬ 


ed tragedy from the stage. Great trage¬ 
dies, such as Shakespeare’s, presented by 
great actors, still keep their place, but the 
popular play is the comedy. 

Comedy amuses, corrects, and heartens. It 
shows that the vanities of life are not final, and 
the failures not always fatal.—Gayley. 

Comedy presents us with the imperfections 
of human nature; farce entertains us with what 
is monstrous and chimerical; the one causes 
laughter in those who can judge of men and 
manners, by the lively representation of their 
folly and corruption; the other produces the 
same effect in those who can judge of neither; 
and that only by its extravagances.—Dryden. 

Comedy of Errors, The, a comedy 
by William Shakespeare. It was one of 
Shakespeare’s earliest plays, having been 
produced December 28, 1594, at Grey’s 
Inn Hall. It was first published in 1623. 
The plot is based on the resemblance be¬ 
tween twin brothers, both named Antipho- 
lus, and the resemblance between their two 
servants, also twin brothers, both named 
Dromio. These likenesses give rise to a 
series of laughable mistakes. The Comedy 
of Errors is the shortest of all Shakes¬ 
peare’s plays, containing only 1,770 lines. 
Robson and Crane, American actors, have 
presented the play with great success, ap¬ 
pearing in the roles of the two Dromios. 

QUOTATIONS. 

Words are but wind. 

Every why hath a wherefore. 

Headstrong liberty is lashed with woe. 

Small cheer and great welcome makes a merry 
feast. 

He that commends me to my own content 

Commends me to the thing I cannot get. 

Comenius, ko-me'ni-us, Johann 
Amos (1592-1671), a Moravian educator. 
Comenius was born in a Moravian village 
and died at Amsterdam. He became a 
teacher in his native country, but was driv¬ 
en out by war and religious persecution. 
He went to Poland and was made bishop 
of the Moravian Brethren. At one time 
he contemplated coming to the New World 
to accept a position in Harvard Univer¬ 
sity. He is remembered chiefly for his 
Or bis Piet us, or the pictorial world, a pri¬ 
mary reading book. It is the first in which 
pictures were employed to assist children 
in learning to read. Of course the cuts 


COMETS—COMMEMORATION ODE 


now seem very rude, but to children of the 
Old World villages at that time, these were 
wonderful books. The Or bis Pictus, pub¬ 
lished in 1657, marks a distinct step in edu¬ 
cation. To be accurate, it was an abbre¬ 
viation of a larger and more pretentious 
work, published in 1631. For some idea 
of the general style of the contents of the 
Orbis Pictus, see article on New Eng¬ 
land Primer. 

Comets, celestial bodies that come from 
space, pass around the sun and disap¬ 
pear in space again. They are accompan¬ 
ied by trails of light, hence the name which 
is derived from a Greek word meaning 
hair. Over eight hundred comets have been 
studied and listed. Some return with reg¬ 
ularity. Others are not expected again. 
Encke’s comet was rediscovered September 
12, 1904, at a distance of 107,000,000 miles 
from the earth. It swept around the sun 
at the rate of 1,250,000 miles a day, and 
disappeared in space. Some comets are vis¬ 
ible for a week or two, others for months. 
One has been seen for two years. Some 
are bright enough to be seen in the day¬ 
time ; others are visible only at night and 
by means of a telescope. 

Tycho Brahe discovered that comets are 
celestial bodies outside of our atmosphere. 
Newton demonstrated that the force which 
keeps the planets in their orbits controls 
also the comets. Plalley first proved that 
comets return at regular intervals, or have, 
as astronomers say, periodicity. Of these, 
Halley’s comet has a period of about 75 
years; Encke’s, 1,204 days; that of Biela, 
6^4 years; that of Faye, 7 l /z years. 

Planets move from west to east; but 
comets move from east to west. The or¬ 
bits or paths of planets are elliptical; those 
of comets take various forms of ellipses or 
parabolas, usually the latter. 

A comet consists of a head, containing 
usually a more or less condensed portion 
called* a nucleus, and a luminous wisp 
which always points away from the sun. 
When approaching the sun, the train 
streams out behind like hair. When the 
comet is receding the same imposing light 
streams out in advance, suggesting a swarm 
of luminous star dust, repelled by elec¬ 
tricity in a direction opposite to that of the 


sun. The tail is seldom less than 5,000,- 
000 miles long, and in some comets attains 
a length of 100,000,000 miles. 

Comets have been regarded as dread 
portents of war and pestilence and famine. 
Milton speaks of a live comet that 

From his horrid hair 
Shakes pestilence and war. 

Shakespeare says: 

When beggars die, there are no comets seen ; 

The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of 
Princes. 

Astronomers also have felt what now 
seems needless alarm* lest one of these bril¬ 
liant travelers should collide with the 
earth. It now appears that no more harm 
is to be apprehended from the tail of a 
comet than from the northern lights, while 
the chance of running into a nucleus is re¬ 
mote, and is unlikely to be attended with 
serious result. Very possibly a shower of 
shooting stars would be the only notice¬ 
able phenomenon. The density of a comet 
does not exceed that of the residuum of air 
left in a first class air pump. 

Professor Young answers the question 
of how it is possible for so light a body to 
make headway in space, by saying that 
space is a perfect vacuum offering no re¬ 
sistance to the passage of bodies. He 
adds the striking statement that if the 
earth were annihilated save a single feath¬ 
er, that feather would continue to move in 
the earth’s present orbit at a rate of eight¬ 
een and one half miles a second. 

See Meteorites; Star; Halley. 

Commemoration Ode, a poem by 
James Russell Lowell written in 1865. 
The full title is Ode Recited at the Har¬ 
vard Commemoration. The poem was 
written for, and read at, the memorial ex¬ 
ercises at Cambridge, in commemoration of 
those members of Harvard College who 
had given their lives to their country. This 
is the finest and most famous ode in Ameri¬ 
can literature. Dr. Burton says: “It should 
be read by all good Americans at least 
once a year.” We quote: 

How could poet ever tower, 

If his passions, hopes, and fears,— 

If his triumphs and his tears, 

Kept not measure with his people? 

Boom, cannon, boom to all the winds and waves ! 
Clash out, glad bells, from every rocking steeple ! 
Banners, advance with triumph, bend your staves! 


COMMENCEMENT—COMMERCE 


And from every mountain-peak 

Let beacon-fire to answering beacon speak, 

Katahdin tell Monadnock, Whiteface he, 

And so leap on in light from sea to sea, 

T ill the glad news be sent 
Across a kindling continent, 

Making earth feel more firm and air breathe 
braver: 

“Be proud ! for she is saved, and all have helped 
to save her.” 

Commencement, the name given in 
America to the concluding exercises of the 
college year, and also used loosely for the 
graduating exercises of high schools, 
academies, etc. It i^ derived from the 
French verb commencer, to commence. 
The term was first used in the old English 
Universities, where,, upon receiving his de¬ 
gree, each graduate was supposed to com¬ 
mence to teach. The better term was “in¬ 
ception” and the beginners were often 
called “inceptors” as well as “commenc- 
ers,” but Cambridge used and still uses 
commencement. From her it was received 
by Harvard, the oldest American univer¬ 
sity, and was adopted later by other Amer¬ 
ican colleges. In colonial times the exer¬ 
cises were held in the fall, and often the 
name has been thought, though mistakenly, 
to apply to the commencement of the col¬ 
lege year. See College; University. 

Commerce, the transportation and 
sale of goods. In a narrow sense it is the 
carrying of goods to market. An exchange 
of goods between different parts of the 
same country is called domestic commerce; 
that between different countries, foreign 
commerce. Goods brought into a country 
are called imports. Goods sent out are 
called exports. The imports of a country 
represent its purchases; the exports, sales 
abroad. 

The foreign commerce of the ancients 
was carried on east of the Mediterranean, 
chiefly by means of caravans; in Europe 
by pack trains; between the ports of the 
Mediterranean, by means of ships. At one 
time the commerce of the Mediterranean 
was almost entirely in the hands of the 
Phoenicians. Tyre, Sidon, and Carthage 
were important ports. The greatest com¬ 
mercial rivals of the Phoenicians were the 
Greeks. They were succeeded in turn by 
the Romans. During the Middle Ages, the 
commerce of Europe was controlled by the 


merchants of the free cities, or hanse towns, 
a great commercial league. 

The leading commercial nation of mod¬ 
ern times is the United Kingdom, better 
known as Great Britain. Counting the 
home country and all her colonial posses¬ 
sions, it is safe to say that very nearly one- 
half the world’s foreign commerce is car¬ 
ried on under the protection of the British 
flag. Germany and the United States are 
close rivals for the second place, with the 
present outlook in favor of the latter. 
France, Belgium, Austria, and Italy follow 
at a distance in the order named. The 
Statesma?i’s Year Book for 1909 gives the 
total value of the imports of Great Brit¬ 
ain at £593,140,723; the exports at £377,- 
219,579. Multiplying these enormous fig¬ 
ures by five, we have the approximate equiv¬ 
alent in American money. 

In a classification of exports and im¬ 
ports, foods come first—the world’s first 
care is to eat and drink. Counting liquor 
and tobacco, of doubtful place as foods but 
gratifying to many appetites, nearly a half 
of the world’s carrying, so far as money 
value goes, is concerned with supplying 
the demand for food. Grain, flour, meat, 
rice, poultry, fish, dairy products, eggs, 
sugar, coffee, tea, cocoa, spices, salt, dried, 
canned, and fresh fruits, vegetables, bev¬ 
erages, remedies, and narcotics are the 
leading items. 

The next great class includes articles 
designed to furnish shelter, comfort, and 
protection. Here we may place raw cot¬ 
ton, silk, wool, flax, hemp, jute, ramie, 
and other fibers, as well as cloth of all 
sorts. Readymade clothing, boots and 
shoes, and much of the leather belong here. 
All sorts of hardware used in building 
houses, lumber, furniture and timber prod¬ 
ucts very generally are designed to shelter 
and protect. Window glass and paint are 
protective. Nearly all building material 
may be placed under this heading. Even 
battleships, cannon and other munitions of 
war may be included as protective. Fuel, 
including coal, kerosene and firewood, is 
used largely, like clothing, for the comfort 
of the body. 

A third great group of articles may be 
classified loosely as machinery. Ships, 


COMMERCE 


engines, locomotives, railroad iron, steel 
and wooden bridges, agricultural machin¬ 
ery and implements, sawmills, windmills, 
gristmills, tools, cutlery, sewing machines, 
harnesses and vehicles,—in short, all de¬ 
vices with which to perform work, belong 
to this class of merchandise. 

After food, shelter, and work tools, comes 
a fourth, as yet a comparatively small 
group of imports and exports,—those of 
an intellectual nature. Printing presses, 
printing paper, and stationery, books, peri¬ 
odicals and newspapers, so far as they are 
not part of the machinery of commerce, 
may be placed here. A very considerable 
part of the world’s mail is personal and 
intellectual. Works of art, including sculp¬ 
ture, paintings, and engravings, may be 
considered intellectual. In order to bring 
up the intellectual aspect of commerce as 
high as possible, it is fair to include jew¬ 
elry and all articles of personal adornment 
which are designed less to offer bodily com¬ 
fort than to give pleasure to the mind. Mu¬ 
sic and musical instruments belong here. 
The higher the stage of civilization, the 
greater the value of this sort of commerce; 
but, after all, it is the first province of 
commerce to see that the world is fed. 

'1 he following recent statistics are to 
be regarded as a representative statement 
of the 


IMPORTS AND EXPORTS OF VARIOUS 

Imports. 


Argentina . 

Australia. 

Austria-Hungary 

Belgium . 

British S. Africa. . . . 

Bulgaria . 

Canada . 

Chile. 

China . 

Denmark . 

Egypt. 

France . 

Germany . 

Greece . 

India, British . 

Italy . 

Japan . 

Mexico .. 

Netherlands . 

Norway . 

Portugal . 

Russia . 

Spain . 

Sweden . 


$275,855,555 

243,603,310 

475,808,863 

661,718,835 

133.746.224 
24,055,344 

351,879,955 

107,193,877 

328,957,082 

149,899,904 

128.445.224 
1,167,196,064 
2,046,187,150 

28,639,886 

442,822,376 

532,774,686 

245,584,575 

110,324,925 

1,068,823,000 

103,369,690 

65,545,000 

412,355,271 

172,490,612 

171,076,242 


COUNTRIES. 

Exports. 

$285,837,216 

288,276,826 

473.160.653 
515,700,825 
231,900,283 

24,239,777 

246,960,968 

102,521,466 

208,860,751 

105,461,216 

138,468,981 

1,069,611,790 

1,634,803,436 

22,397,531 

562,525,863 

357,337,405 

213,394,963 

120,883,976 

883,926,000 

58,952,442 

31,396,000 

563,866,338 

152,593,410 

135.146.654 


i Imports. Exports. 

Switzerland . 311,659,190 222,509,951 

United Kingdom .... 3,143,292,673 2,074,124,666 

United States. 1,183,120,665 1,834,786,357 

Uruguay . 35,595,662 36,346,069 

Venezuela . 10,335,817 16,203,972 


If a careful account be kept, the sum of 
the world’s imports equals the total of ex¬ 
ports ; for, barring loss at sea and in trans¬ 
it, whatever one country exports, other 
countries import. As a matter of fact, 
however, the value placed on articles of im¬ 
port may not be the export value. 

As may be seen from the table, the 
United Kingdom, Germany, the United 
States, the Netherlands, and France have 
most to buy and sell. The newer food-pro¬ 
ducing countries, as the United States, 
Australia, and for many reasons we must 
include Russia and India, are larger sell¬ 
ers than they are buyers. The balance of 
the money coming to them they spend hir¬ 
ing the ships of other nations to carry goods 
for them and in paying interest on money 
borrowed to build railroads, or to defray 
the expense of war. 

The United States, for instance, pays 
large sums to European bankers in this 
way. Instead of sending actual interest 
money, we send exports. We are now 
paying off the cost of our Civil War, and 
the expense of building the Northern Pa¬ 
cific, the Union Pacific, and other great 
railroads, by selling cotton, machinery, 
wheat, and flour. When we catch up we 
shall become larger buyers—assuredly so, 
unless our sales fall off. 

On the other hand, a few of the old, 
rich, manufacturing countries buy more 
than they sell. These are the countries 
that are loaning the rest of the world mon¬ 
ey to carry goods and to make improve¬ 
ments. Belgium, the Netherlands, France, 
and Germany are examples of nations that 
are greater buyers than they are sellers. 
The United Kingdom is a great selling na¬ 
tion. British manufactures are offered, we 
may say, over almost every counter in the 
world. There is hardly a tribe so rude 
or remote that the works of Birmingham 
or Sheffield are not offered in exchange for 
herbs, ivory, or fur. Yet the balance of 
trade shows that the United Kingdom is 
not only a great seller in the world, but 




























COMMISSION GOVERNMENT—COMMONWEALTH 

/ 


that it is a still greater buyer. So far as 
foreign markets are concerned, British 
merchants buy nearly twice as much as they 
sell. As may be seen from the table, Brit¬ 
ish purchases of foreign foods and material 
for manufactures, such as cotton and wool, 
exceed the total exports by over $1,000,- 
000,000 a year. This sum, too large for 
the imagination to grasp, is earned by loan¬ 
ing money to the newer countries, and by 
carrying goods for other nations. 

A small amount of merchandise is car¬ 
ried yet by caravans and pack trains. Rail¬ 
roads serve as mediums of foreign trade 
between Switzerland and adjacent states, 
Russia and Germany, Austria and her 
neighbors, and in America between the 
United States and the Dominion and Mex¬ 
ico, as well; but the greater part of the 
world’s foreign commerce is carried on by 
sea. The beaten sea routes radiate from 
Great Britain. That from Liverpool to 
New York, and that from London, via 
Suez, to Singapore and to Hongkong, are 
spoken of by British writers as the Atlan¬ 
tic Route and the East Route, respective¬ 
ly. Other noted routes are the Cape 
Route and the Cape Horn Route. The 
Atlantic is the ocean of commerce. The 
commerce of the Pacific is of comparatively 
recent growth. The great seas of com¬ 
merce are the Mediterranean and the Bal¬ 
tic. The Great Lakes of North America 
are the most important inland waterway. 
The Mississippi, the Rhine, and the Dan¬ 
ube are possibly the most important com¬ 
mercial rivers. A recent writer states that 
with respect to mere tonnage the seaports 
of the world rank as follows: London, 
New York, Antwerp, Hamburg, Hong¬ 
kong, Liverpool, Cardiff, Rotterdam, Sing¬ 
apore, Marseilles, Tyne Ports, and Gibral¬ 
tar. 

Reliable statistics of the world’s com¬ 
merce date from 1720. The following to¬ 
tals indicate the rapid growth of interna¬ 
tional business. It must be remembered that 
prices change and that the relative volume 
of shipments is not indicated accurately 
by a money estimate. 


Year. Total Commerce. 

1720 . $428,000,000 

1780 . 905,000,000 

1820 . 1,660,000,000 


1860 . 7,246,000,000 

1900 .20,715,000,000 

1910 .40,000,000,000 


Commission Government. See Mu¬ 
nicipal Government. 

Commodore, an officer in the navy 
next in rank above a captain. In the navy 
of the United States, the rank was first 
created in 1862, but was abolished in 1899, 
when all commodores became rear-admirals. 
A commodore commands two or more ships, 
and ranks with a brigadier-general in the 
army. When three or more ships are ly¬ 
ing at anchor together the title of commo¬ 
dore is given by courtesy to the captain 
longest in the service. It is also custom¬ 
ary to call the president of a yachting club 
or an organization of boat clubs the com¬ 
modore. The commodore’s flag of the 
British navy is a white, swallowtailed pen¬ 
nant, with a red cross. In the United 
States the commodore’s pennant may be 
red, white, or blue, with a single star in 
the center. The lower point is the longer. 

Common Law. See Law. 

Common Schools. See Schools. 

Commons, in Great Britain, all who 
are not members of the House of Lords, 
that is to say, the general people. In a 
more restricted sense, the term applies to 
the lower house of Parliament, the mem¬ 
bers of which are elected by and represent 
the commons. The House of Commons 
now consists of 495 members for England 
and Wales, 72 for Scotland, and 103 for 
Ireland. See Parliament; Oxford. 

Commonwealth and Protectorate, 
The, a name applied to the period of 
English history between the death of 
Charles I, 1649, and the restoration of 
Charles II, 1660. Following the execution 
of Charles I, the Rump Parliament de¬ 
creed the establishment of the Common¬ 
wealth “without king or House of Lords.” 
A council of state was appointed to have 
charge of administrative affairs, while leg¬ 
islative affairs were still attended to by the 
Rump. There were many difficulties to be 
met in England,—insurrections by royal¬ 
ists and by extreme democrats; rebellions 
in Ireland and Scotland; foreign war from 
France and Holland. Under such con¬ 
ditions the Rump Parliament, wholly par- 








COMMUNE—COMMUNISM 


tisan and unrepresentative of the country, 
was unfit to deal with the situation. Crom¬ 
well, at last in 1653, weary of their bicker¬ 
ings and delay, went to the Parliament 
accompanied by soldiers, drove out the 
members and locked the door. After sev¬ 
eral attempts on the part of Cromwell to 
secure a working Parliament, the officers 
of the army drew up the Instrument of 
Government in which the chief power was 
vested in Cromwell as Protector of Eng¬ 
land. Although the document provided 
for an advisory council and a Parliament, 
the real power for the remainder of his 
life was exercised by Cromwell with all 
the authority of an absolute ruler. Never¬ 
theless, it forms an important period in 
English history, for, unlike the “divine 
right” Stuarts, Cromwell exercised his au¬ 
thority for national, not personal, ends. 
Insurrections were crushed; the rebellions 
in Scotland and Ireland were put down, 
the latter, many think, with inexcusable 
ferocity; foreign war was successfully car¬ 
ried on, and the naval supremacy of Hol¬ 
land was destroyed; the first Navigation 
Act was passed, by which English com¬ 
merce was promoted. Though the des¬ 
potism of Cromwell had antagonized the 
people and prepared them to welcome the 
return of the Stuarts, the fact cannot be 
ignored that without the stern rule of 
Cromwell, a peaceable restoration of 
Charles II would have been impossible. 
See Cromwell; Navigation Acts; 
Charles i. 

Commune, in France the smallest di¬ 
vision of a province or department. It 
corresponds to our township, and to the 
English parish. Each commune is in a 
measure independent, and is governed by 
its own council and a maire, or mayor. 
The communes vary greatly in population 
from a few dozen in a thinly populated, 
mountainous district up to the commune of 
Paris with its millions. 

Communism, the common ownership 
of all property. Each member works for 
the community. Each is a member of one 
large family, embracing the entire com¬ 
munity. Communism differs from social¬ 
ism in that the latter contemplates that cer¬ 
tain utilities or industries shall be owned by 
11-16 


the people instead of the capitalists, and 
that wage earners work for the public in¬ 
stead of for private employers. Public 
ownership of waterworks, roads, gas 
plants, telegraphs, railroads, are some of 
the preliminary steps of socialism. Com¬ 
munism, however, extends to all forms of 
property. In a strictly socialistic commun¬ 
ity, a man may raise peas for his own table, 
but not peas for sale. The public pea patch 
takes care of the market. In a strictly 
communistic society, there are no private 
pea patches. The public patch is the only 
one; and, in fact, the public table is the 
only table. The communistic gardener 
could make no use of private peas if he 
had them. 

The earliest Christian churches were 
communistic. Ananias and Sapphira, his 
wife, it may be remembered, were struck 
dead for pretending that they had put all 
their property into the common treasury, 
when in fact they were withholding a part. 
The various religious orders of monks and 
nuns are founded on the principle of com¬ 
munism. 

The French Fourier (1772-1837), a 
Lyons merchant, questioned the righteous¬ 
ness of existing mercantile and manufac¬ 
turing systems whereby the few become 
rich at the expense necessarily of the many. 
His doctrines, known as Fourierism, took 
root in the United States in the early part 
of the nineteenth century. Horace Gree¬ 
ley was very much impressed with the idea 
of communism as a preventive of misery 
and want. The two periodicals known as 
the Phalanx and the Harbinger were 
founded to advocate communistic prin¬ 
ciples. Between thirty and forty associa¬ 
tions or communities were organized. 

Robert Owen, a British manufacturer, 
brought over a number of his countrymen 
to found societies. The most noted was 
that at New Harmony, Indiana. The 
Shakers are a communistic denomination, 
found chiefly in New York. The Onei¬ 
da Community of New York was estab¬ 
lished in 1848. It carries on a number of 
industries. The steel trap used by the trap¬ 
pers of the Northwest for several decades 
bears the stamp of the Oneida Community. 
Oneida silverware is of excellent quality. 


COMMUTATOR—COMPASS 


The Amana Community still flourishes in 
Iowa. It comprises seven villages with sur¬ 
rounding farm lands. The society is noted 
for thrift, fine stock, and manufactures of 
woolen goods. Dowie’s Zion City in Illi¬ 
nois is the latest notable attempt of the 
sort. 

The following quotation is from the 
Britannica. It applies more properly to 
the talking communist. “The opinion that 
a communist is a man who has no 
property to lose, and who therefore advo¬ 
cates a general redistribution of wealth, is 
very widespread and popular. It is em¬ 
bodied in the well known lines of the corn- 
law rhymer: 

What is a Communist? One who hath yearnings 
For equal division of unequal earnings. 

Idler or bungler, or both, he is willing 
To fork out his penny and pocket your shilling. 

See Brook Farm; Socialism; New 
Harmony. 

Commutator. See Dynamo. 

Como, a lake, a province, and a city in 
Lombardy at the Italian foot of the Alps. 
The province is the traditional headquarters 
of the Italian peddler of small wares. 
Lake Como is one of the most beautiful in 
Italy. It is sixteen miles in length and 
about two and one-half in width. It lies 
700 feet above the level of the sea, nearly 
200 feet above Milan. It is surrounded by 
mountains from 3,000 to 7,000 feet high, 
and is bordered by delightful driveways 
and country seats. Lake Como trout are 
celebrated for their flavor. The population 
of the entire commune, including the city, 
is about 25,000. 

Compass, an instrument designed to 
indicate directions. It is constructed on 
the principle that a lodestone, or mag¬ 
netized needle, will swing into a north and 
south line if mounted on a pivot, so as to 
turn freely. A suspended needle and a dial 
are the essential features. A mariner’s 
compass is swung in rings in such a way 
that the dial keeps a horizontal position, 
however the ship may pitch and toss. These 
rings are called gimbals . The gimbals with 
the compass are then placed inside a box, 
called the binnacle. Inside the binnacle, in 
the direction of the ship’s bow, is a vertical 
black line called the lubber-line, and the 
steersman must keep the point of the card 


which marks the prescribed course always 
in contact with the black line. The dial 
is laid off in the figure of a star with 
thirty-two rays corresponding to the thirty- 
two directions recognized by a seaman. 
Between north and northeast, for instance, 
designated in the usual way by N. and 
NE., are three additional directions called 
north-by-east, north-northeast, and north¬ 
east-by-north, designated as NbE, NNE, 
and NEbN respectively. To box the com¬ 
pass is to pass around the dial, beginning 
at the north, and naming the thirty-two di¬ 
rections consecutively. 

It is difficult to give proper credit for 
the invention or discovery of the compass. 
The Chinese seem to have understood its 
secret 3,000 years before Europeans learned 
to steer without the aid of the sun and the 
North Star. According to some authori¬ 
ties, Marco Polo brought back a knowledge 
of the compass from Cathay in 1260. 

Owing to the position of the magnetic 
poles and the unequal distribution of iron 
and magnetic ores, there are few lines on 
the earth’s surface where the needle as¬ 
sumes an exact north and south direction. 
A deviation is called variation of the com¬ 
pass. The compass used for land survey¬ 
ing differs somewhat from the mariner’s 
compass. Engineers who are running rail¬ 
road lines or surveying public lands ascer¬ 
tain the variation by reference to the North 
Star and make due allowance. In the 
United States, the line of no variation 
crosses Lake Erie into western Pennsyl¬ 
vania and passes southeasterly into the 
Atlantic, near the boundary between the 
Carolinas. 

Dr. William Gilbert, physician to Queen 
Elizabeth, first explained the action of the 
compass. In place of the theory that the 
needle is drawn into position by the in¬ 
fluence of certain stars, he showed that the 
earth is a magnet, and that the earth acts on 
the needle as one magnet acts on another. 
Subsequent investigation has demonstrated 
the truth of Gilbert’s theory. Inasmuch 
as unlike poles of magnets attract each 
other, that spot in the northern hemisphere 
that attracts the north pole, or north end 
of the magnetic needle, is considered the 
south magnetic pole of the earth. Moreover 
the magnetic poles are not located at the 


COMPASS PLANT—COMPRESSED AIR 


geographic poles. In 1831 the south mag- 
. netic pole was located in Canada in lati¬ 
tude 70° 30', longitude 95°. The north 
magnetic pole, i. e., the pole that attracts 
the south end of the needle, is in latitude 
72° 35' S., longitude 152° E. Explorers 
in polar regions find it necessary to be on 
guard. When carried to a point east of 
the south, that is to say, the Canadian mag¬ 
netic pole, the needle points west, and at a 
corresponding point to the westward, the 
needle points east. 

See North Star; Roger Bacon; Mag¬ 
net. 

The variation itself could not be accounted 
for on the doctrine vulgarly received, that mag¬ 
netism is an effluvium issuing forth from the root 
of the tail of the Little Bear, but was scientific¬ 
ally, though erroneously, expressed by Gilbert’s 
hypothesis that earthly substance is attractive— 
that a needle approaching a continent will in¬ 
cline toward it; and hence that in the midst of 
the Atlantic, being equally disturbed by Europe 
and America, it will point evenly between both.— 
Draper. 

Compass Plant, a large prairie plant 
called also “rosinweed,” from the abund¬ 
ance of resinous matter it contains. It 
derives the name “compass plant” from 
the fact that when found on the prairies 
the stem leaves stand edgewise and point 
due north and south. This peculiarity, 
found also in the prickly lettuce, is due 
to the sensitiveness of the leaves to light. 
Both sides are equally susceptible, and 
only by standing vertically with their tips 
to the north and the south can the leaves 
secure uniform illumination. 

Compleat Angler, The. See Walton. 

Composition, English, the art of writ¬ 
ing English, as taught in primary and sec¬ 
ondary schools. In primary schools prac¬ 
tice in writing is given as incidental to 
other subjects. Even the members of the 
First Reader class put together the words 
they learn to form sentences. This is 
composition, and in our public schools 
such practice is continued in connection 
with reading, grammar and other subjects, 
and is sometimes taught by means of a 
special class up to the high school. In 
high schools and academies English Com¬ 
position or Composition and Rhetoric is 
a first year subject, continued during the 
course in connection with the study of 


literature, or by means of a literary society 
or regular rhetorical exercises in which 
all students participate. In colleges prac¬ 
tice in writing is given under the subject 
of Rhetoric. 

Composition as a high school subject 
follows and in a sense completes technical 
grammar with the essentials of which stu¬ 
dents should at this time be familiar. It 
precedes and introduces rhetoric, such 
subjects as choice of words, qualities of 
style, figures of speech, being treated 
incidentally either with or without a text¬ 
book on the subject. Text-books on com¬ 
position deal usually with the four impor¬ 
tant classes of written discourse, narration, 
description, exposition, and argument. The 
chief object of the study, however, and the 
constant aim of the teacher, should be 
to give students daily practice in the 
art of writing until they express their 
thoughts readily on paper. Arlo Bates, 
in his practical and witty Talks on Writ¬ 
ing English, says, “the way to write is 
to write” and goes on to liken writing to 
piano playing, skill in which can be ac¬ 
quired only by constant and patient prac¬ 
tice. Those whom we regard as the great¬ 
est geniuses have often been the most 
patient and persistent in practicing their 
art. 

“All through my boyhood and youth, I was 
known and pointed out for a pattern of an idler; 
and yet I was always busy on my own private 
end, which was to learn to write. I kept al¬ 
ways two books in my pocket, one to read, one 
to write in. As I walked, my mind was busy 
fitting what I saw with appropriate words; 
when I sat by the roadside, I would either read, 
or a pencil and a penny version book would be 
in my hand to note down the features of the 
scene or commemorate some halting stanzas. 
Thus I lived with words. And I wrote thus for 
no ulterior use It was written consciously for 
practice.”—Robert Louis Stevenson. 

Compressed Air, as a motive power has 
come to have a widely extended use. The 
compression is effected by means of pumps 
from whence the air is transmitted through 
pipes to where it is to be utilized. It is 
mainly employed where the conditions or 
distance would not permit the use of belts 
or shafting, as in bridge-building and 
tunneling in mines. Its application to 
rock drills, in riveting-machines, or in air- 


COMPROMISE OF 1850—COMTE 


brakes on trains is familiar. In recent 
years, electricity has largely taken its 
place for certain purposes, but new uses 
are constantly being found for it. 

Compromise of 1850 , also called the 
Omnibus Bill. See Clay, Henry; Fugi¬ 
tive Slave Law. 

Compulsory Education, attendance at 
school enforced by law. That it is the 
privilege and duty of a state to train chil¬ 
dren for future citizenship has been recog¬ 
nized from ancient times. Sparta took 
boys -from their parents at the age of sev¬ 
en, taught them to read and to be brave 
soldiers. Athens trained both brain and 
body, developed the moral nature and the 
sense of beauty. Rome gave military train¬ 
ing at public expense. 

In modern times there are laws in force 
in the United States and in nearly all 
European countries compelling parents to 
send children between the ages of six and 
fourteen or sixteen, to school during a cer¬ 
tain number of months of each year. 

State laws for the purpose of compel¬ 
ling school attendance were not in force 
generally until the latter part of the nine¬ 
teenth century. They have been enacted 
usually as a result of the growing tendency 
to put children to work to help support 
the family. Laws differ in various states 
as to the limits of school age, the number 
of months of schooling required yearly, 
and the penalty for disobedience of the 
law. The number of years included under 
school age varies from four to ten. At¬ 
tendance is required yearly for half the 
term, the full term or for a definite num¬ 
ber of months. The penalty of disobedi¬ 
ence is in most cases a fine, in some, im¬ 
prisonment. In large cities the laws are 
enforced by truant officers; in rural dis¬ 
tricts or small towns the school board 
enforces the law. Defective children and 
those in ill health are of course exempt. 

Compurgation, in early English law, 
a mode of trial according to which the ac¬ 
cused was permitted to bring a number 
of friends to express a belief in his inno¬ 
cence. The compurgators, “oath helpers,” 
were generally twelve in number. They 
were usually kinsmen or fellow guild mem¬ 
bers. They were not called as witnesses; 


the accused swore that he was innocent; 
the compurgators swore that they believed 
his oath to be “clean and without guile,” 
and that they were satisfied of his inno¬ 
cence. The custom was brought to Eng¬ 
land by the Saxons. It appears to have 
been not uncommon among Teutonic tribes. 
It is believed that the “trial by jury,” not 
infrequently attributed to King Alfred’s 
reign, was simply compurgation, and that 
a person charged with crime could be ac¬ 
quitted by this method. Twelve men could 
clear an accused kinsman by stating under 
oath their belief in his innocence. Com¬ 
purgation was abolished in the English 
courts by the Assize of Clarendon, 1166. 
This code was issued by Henry II with the 
advice and consent of a council of barons 
and prelates. An institution bearing some 
resemblance to a modern grand jury took 
the place of the compurgators. Compur¬ 
gation in the courts of the church was 
abolished during the reign of Elizabeth. A 
curious survival of the practice of com¬ 
purgation was the wager of law, whereby a 
person sued for debt could clear himself 
by bringing in eleven neighbors to testify 
under oath that they believed the defend¬ 
ant’s sworn denial that he owed the sum in 
question. This relic of Saxon compurga¬ 
tion was abolished in 1833. The compur¬ 
gators were not jurymen in the modern 
sense of the term, but compurgation was 
one of the elements which, in Norman 
hands, grew into the jury system. 

Comte, kont, Auguste ( 1798-1857), 
the founder of the system of philosophy 
known as Positivism, and the first sys¬ 
tematic writer on sociology. His doctrine, 
in brief, is that intelligence, both of the 
individual and of society, has passed 
through three stages: first, that in which 
supernatural beings are thought to pro¬ 
duce all phenomena; second, the state in 
which abstract forces, either mental or 
physical, are believed to be the causes 
of all activity; and, finally, the Positive 
stage, in which men give up inquiring into 
the causes of things and deal only with 
actual phenomena and the relations be¬ 
tween them. His best known works are 
Positive Philosophy, Positive Catechism , 
and Positive Polity. 


COMUS—CONCH SHELL 


Comus, ko'mus, a mask by John Milton, 
presented before the Earl of Bridgewater 
at Ludlow Castle September 29, 1634. It 
was first printed in 1637. It is the longest 
and most important of Milton’s minor 
poems. At this time the popularity of the 
mask, as a form of entertainment, was at 
its height. Charles I appointed the Earl 
of Bridgewater Lord President of Wales, 
the official seat of which position was Lud¬ 
low, Shropshire. The earl requested 
Henry Lawes, his children’s tutor, to ar¬ 
range a mask, or masque, as the word was 
then spelled, to celebrate his taking posses¬ 
sion of Ludlow Castle. Lawes was some¬ 
thing more than a tutor. He was also a 
musical composer of talent. He was the 
friend of Milton, whose assistance he asked 
in preparing the mask. Lawes explained the 
nature of the event to be celebrated, and 
told his friend what characters would be 
expected to take part. Milton wrote the 
poem. Lawes furnished the music and 
looked after the staging. He also took one 
of the prominent parts, that of the attend¬ 
ing spirit. The part of “The Lady” was 
taken by the earl’s fourteen year old 
daughter. The Lady’s brothers were repre¬ 
sented by his two younger sons. The other 
characters of the Mask are Comus, an en¬ 
chanter, son of Circe, and Sabrina, a 
nymph. Comus carries off the Lady and 
places her in a beautiful palace under the 
spell of his magic art. Pier brothers, led 
by the attendant Spirit, put Comus to rout; 
and with the aid of Sabrina, liberate their 
sister from the spell which holds her. That 
is all the story, but Milton, as Taine says, 
was able to “impress his own character 
even on ornamental poems which were only 
employed to exhibit costumes and introduce 
fairy tales.” The poet makes use of his 
simple setting to glorify virtue; to show 
that the inherent power of goodness is 
proof against any evils that may assail it. 
He does this in a poem of lofty style and 
perfect finish, “the most perfect mask in 
any language.” 

It is interesting to note that the name 
Comus was not given to the mask until 
after Milton’s death. Milton himself called 
it “A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle, 
1634, before the Earl of Bridgewater, Lord. 


President of Wales.” Comus was present¬ 
ed by the students of Tufts College, Massa¬ 
chusetts, in 1901. 

Comus has been widely quoted. The last 
quotation given includes the closing lines of 
the mask, which embody the lesson of the 
poem, and, we may say, present Milton’s 
guiding principle. The entire poem con¬ 
tains only 1,023 lines. There are few 
poems of equal length that will better repay 
careful reading. 

He that has light within his own clear breast 
May sit i’ th’ center and enjoy bright day; 

But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts 
Benighted walks under the midday sun. 

Virtue could see to do what virtue would 
By her own radiant light, though sun and moon 
Were in the flat sea sunk. 

So dear to heav’n is saintly chastity. 

That when a soul is found sincerely so, 

A thousand liveried angels lackey her, 

Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt, 
And in clear dream and solemn vision 
Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear. 
Till oft converse with heav’nly habitants 
Begin to cast a beam on th’ outward shape. 

. . . Against the threats 
Of malice or of sorcery, or that power 
Which erring men call Chance, this I hold firm: 
Virtue may be assailed, but never hurt, 

Surprised by unjust force, but not enthralled: 
Yea, even that which Mischief meant most harm 
Shall in the happy trial prove most glory. 

Mortals, that would follow me, 

Love Virtue; she alone is free. 

She can teach ye how to climb 
Higher than the sphery chime; 

Or, if Virtue feeble were, 

Heaven itself would stoop to her. 

CRITICISMS. 

Judged in respect of its allegory, its pastoral 
beauties, its lyric strains, its epic flavor, its lofty 
philosophical tone, its “inevitable” lines or poetic 
“touchstones,” Comus must be regarded as one of 
the most perfect fruits of Milton’s genius.—• 
Gayley and Young. 

Comus, well worked out, with a complete 
originality and extraordinary elevation of style, 
is perhaps Milton’s masterpiece, and is simply 
the eulogy of virtue.—Taine. 

I did not perceive its faults.—Anon. 

Concept. See Thinking. 

Conch (konk) Shell, a large spiral 
shell with a flowing lip, formerly much 
used as a dinner horn to call the men from 
the field. In Hawthorne’s day the fish 
dealer announced his passage along the 
village street by blowing lustily on a conch 


CONCLAVE—CONCORD GRAPE 


shell. The large pink conch of the West 
Indies is in demand for its pearl, and is 
much used for inlaid work, buttons, pearl 
handles and the like. Held to the ear, the 
conch gives forth a murmuring sound lik¬ 
ened by the poets to that of the distant 
ocean. 

But I have sinuous shells of pearly hue 
Within, and they that lustre have imbibed 
In the sun’s palace-porch, where when unyoked 
His chariot-wheel stands midway in the wave; 
Shake one, and it awakens; then apply 
Its polished lips to your attentive ear, 

And it remembers its august abodes, 

And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there. 

—Walter Savage Landor. 

Conclave, the college of cardinals as¬ 
sembled to elect a pope. The name is also 
applied to the apartment in which the elec¬ 
tion is held. The last conclave was held 
at Rome, July, 1903. It lasted for five 
days. Seven ballots were taken, resulting 
in the election of the patriarch of Venice, 
or Pius X. This was the first and only 
conclave in which a cardinal from the 
United States has ever taken part. See 
Cardinal; Pope. 

Concord, Massachusetts, a town on the 
Concord River, twenty miles northwest of 
Boston. It was settled in 1635, five years 
later than Boston. The present village had 
a population in 1900 of 5,652. It is situ¬ 
ated in a beautiful farming region, forty 
minutes by rail from Boston. There are a 
number of manufactures. Concord is cele¬ 
brated as the place of residence of a num¬ 
ber of noted literary people. The gray stones 
of Sleepy Hollow burying ground near by 
bear the names of Emerson, Hawthorne, 
Thoreau, and Alcott, and their former resi¬ 
dences are still pointed out. The “Old 
Manse,” in which Hawthorne wrote his 
Mosses, is here. Ephraim Bull, the propa¬ 
gator of the famous Concord grape, lived 
here, and his grave is among those of the 
local celebrities. 

At the beginning of the Revolutionary 
War, April 19, 1775, General Gage sent 
a command to destroy a large store of pow¬ 
der, balls, and muskets at Concord. The 
first American blood was shed at Lexing¬ 
ton. The redcoats were met at Concord 
Bridge by the minute men who made a brief 
resistance, during which the first British 


fell. A century later, a bronze monument 
of a minute man on a granite pedestal was 
unveiled. On the pedestal is engraved the 
first stanza of Emerson’s well-known poem, 
as follows: 

By the rude bridge that arched the flood, 
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled, 

Here once the embattled farmers stood, 

And fired the shot heard round the world. 

See Lexington ; Emerson. 

Concord, capital of New Hampshire, 
and county seat of Merrimack County, lo¬ 
cated seventy-five miles northwest of Bos¬ 
ton. As it is in the center of the white gran¬ 
ite region the quarrying of that mineral is 
one of its leading industries. It has a vari¬ 
ety of manufactures, among them furni¬ 
ture, pianos, silverware, carriages, flour, 
leather goods, cotton and woolen goods, 
shoes, etc. Its wide streets, handsome 
state and municipal buildings, and numer¬ 
ous parks give the city a pleasing appear¬ 
ance. The population in 1910 was 21,497. 

Concord Grape, the leading American 
grape. In 1840 some boys scattered wild 
fox grapes about the place of Mr. Ephraim 
Bull of Concord, Massachusetts, and a 
number of grapevines grew up. In 1843 
his attention was attracted by a bunch of 
grapes on one of these seedlings. Mr. Bull 
planted these grapes, and in 1849 he ob¬ 
tained a fine fruiting vine, which he 
named the Concord. From this vine fifty 
varieties of Concord grapes have sprung, 
and yet it was the grandchild of a wild 
grape from the woods of Concord. The 
original Concord vine is still growing, but 
it has been reduced to a mere sprout from 
the old root. Mr. Bull died in 1895, in 
his ninetieth year. It is to be regretted 
that one who conferred so great a benefit 
on his country, and who lived so unselfish¬ 
ly, should have ended his days in poverty. 

Some eight years ago the editor of Farm, 
Stock and Home visited the old town of Con¬ 
cord, Massachusetts, around which are wreathed 
historical and literary laurels in great abundance 
and of rare value; yes, and of rare horticultural 
value too; for a humble little garden there was the 
birth place of the Concord grape. Visiting the 
old vine at the time mentioned, it was found to 
be in a woefully neglected state, as was the en¬ 
tire garden, and the always humble and modest 
home of the Concord’s originator, Ephraim 
Wales Bull. Before leaving town the editor made 


CONCORDANCE—CONCRETE 


a vigorous protest to some of the town authorities 
against the treatment the old vine and home were 
receiving, and asserted that both, preserved and 
well cared for, would in the early future con¬ 
stitute a relic and attraction in the town that 
would prove more attractive to many pilgrims 
who annually visit it than any one of the many 
other relics it possesses. 

Whether the protest had any effect or not, a re¬ 
cent visit disclosed a radical change in the con¬ 
dition and environment of the old vine. The 
last is now enclosed in a substantial trellis, it is 
kept fairly free from grass and weeds; the house 
and grounds are in a well kept condition; and a 
movement is on foot to erect a suitable monu¬ 
ment to Mr. Bull, who “sowed that others might 
reap,”—the sentiment on the bronze tablet on the 
native granite boulder at the head of his grave. 

To the trellis has been attached an ancient 
looking bit of board carrying the following in¬ 
scription, cut by Mr. Bull himself in well-formed 
letters: 

“I looked about to see what I could find among 
our wildings. The next thing to do was to find 
the best and earliest grape for seed, and this I 
found in an accidental seedling at the foot of the 
hill. The crop was abundant, ripe in August, and 
of very good quality for a wild grape. I sowed 
the seed in the autumn of 1843. Among them 
the Concord was the only one worth saving.—E. 
W. Bull.” 

This is the story of the origin of the Concord 
grape as recorded by its originator in a manner 
which made it desirable to tell the story in the 
fewest words possible.—S. M. Owen. 

Concordance, a finding list of passages 
in an important work or series of writings. 
The principal words are arranged alpha¬ 
betically. Under each, the various phrases 
are cited in which the word occurs. Per¬ 
haps the most celebrated is the concordance 
to the Holy Scriptures by Alexander Cru- 
den, published in 1737. If we want to find 
an'account of the destruction of the temple 
by Samson, we turn to posts and find the 
following: Judges xvi: 3, Samson took 
the two p. Turning to the third verse of 
the sixteenth chapter of Judges, we find 
the desired passage. Numerous concord¬ 
ances to Shakespeare’s works have ap¬ 
peared. The best is that by John Bart¬ 
lett, published in New York in 1894. The 
alphabetical index placed usually at the 
end of an author’s work, is a brief con¬ 
cordance. 

Concordat, a treaty between the pope as 
head of the Church of Rome and a civil 
government dealing with affairs of the 
Roman Catholic Church, within the state 


represented. As a rule the affairs so treat¬ 
ed have both a temporal and religious as¬ 
pect, though they may be either purely 
temporal or purely spiritual. The first 
such agreement was the celebrated Con¬ 
cordat of Worms between Pope Callistus 
II and Emperor Henry V, which settled 
a quarrel between church and state regard¬ 
ing the right of investiture. Two other 
well-known concordats are that of 1516 
between Leo X and Francis I of France 
and the agreement between Pius VII and 
Napoleon in 1801. The latter concordat 
was abrogated in 1905 by the separation 
of church and state in France. 

Concrete, an artificial stone. Builders’ 
concrete of the present day is made of one 
part of Portland or hydraulic cement, three 
parts of sand, and six parts of crushed 
stone. The sharper, more angular, and 
clean the sand and stone, the better. These 
materials are mixed thoroughly with water, 
deposited either in molds to form slabs and 
blocks for curbing and paving, or else laid 
in the foundation or wall, and allowed to 
harden where the concrete is to remain. 
The ancient Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek, 
and Roman builders were familiar with 
this kind of material. The Romans, espe¬ 
cially, employed concrete in the construc¬ 
tion of foundations, piers, aqueducts, road¬ 
ways, and bridges, portions of which still 
remain. In the early part of the nine¬ 
teenth century the French constructed a 
breakwater to protect the harbor of Algiers. 
For want of quarry stone, blocks of con¬ 
crete, weighing twenty-two tons each, were 
dropped into water fifty feet deep until 
they formed a long, irregular mole or pro¬ 
tective wall. Concrete is used extensively 
in making a footing for brick or stone 
walls, especially in muddy, soft excavations 
where it is not practicable to reach bed 
rock. The foundation walls of the Chica¬ 
go postoffice are supported in this way. Of 
late concrete slabs of superior quality have 
come into favor for sidewalks, and the 
cheapening of Portland cement has sug¬ 
gested the use of concrete for entire build¬ 
ings. It is not unusual to use concrete 
blocks in place of cut stone for door sills, 
window sills, window caps, and the like. 
See Cement. 


CONDE—CONE 


Conde, k6n-da', a French family, a 
younger branch of the Bourbons, taking 
the name from the town of Conde. For 
an account of the most noted Prince de 
Conde (1530-1569), see Huguenots. 

Condenser. See Leyden Jar. 

Condor, a large vulture-like bird of 
prey, inhabiting the Andean region of 
South America. It is the largest bird that 
flies. It measures over three feet from the 
tip of its bill to the end of its tail, and has 
a total wing expanse of nine or, in unusual 
specimens, fourteen feet. Its general color 
is a grayish black, terminating in a white, 
fluffy, silky collar or ruff, into which the 
bird withdraws its wrinkled head and neck 
for warmth and protection. The condor 
nests on the most inaccessible cliffs, laying 
two white eggs, four inches in length. The 
condor requires seven weeks to hatch its 
eggs, and the young must be fed for a 
whole year before they are able to fly. The 
condor soars at enormous altitudes—from 
10,000 to 15,000 feet above the sea. It 
has a wonderful eye, and a keen sense of 
smell. The name condor is, in fact, de¬ 
rived from an old Indian word signifying 
a good smeller. Condors are usually seen 
in groups of three or four; never in large 
companies. 

If the truth must be told, this bird, so 
noble in flight, is a greedy, repulsive crea¬ 
ture close at hand. It descends to the 
plains upon the slightest promise of car¬ 
rion. Dead animals of every sort are its 
choicest food. Condors gather in disgust¬ 
ing groups around a dead horse or cow, 
and tear the carcass, devouring such enor¬ 
mous quantities that they are at first un¬ 
able to fly, and are killed by the Indians 
with clubs and stones. The condor is not 
especially courageous. It attacks little al¬ 
pacas, wounded animals, or sick cattle, 
first tearing out the eyes and the tongue. 
Its nature seems to be very much like that 
of the alpine lammergeir to which, indeed, 
it is closely related. 

The California condor, or vulture, is al¬ 
most as large as the Andean. It formerly 
ranged from British Columbia southward, 
but is no longer seen north of Southern 
California. The eggs, now to be found 
only in the high coast Sierras, are quoted 
by collectors at $225 a nest. 


I was told by the country people in Chile that 
the condor makes no sort of nest, but in the 
months of November and December lays two 
large white eggs on a shelf of bare rock. It is 
said that the young condors cannot fly for an en¬ 
tire year; and long after they are able they con¬ 
tinue to roost by night, and hunt by day with 
their parents. The old birds generally live in 
pairs; but among the inland basaltic cliffs I found 
a spot where scores must usually haunt. On 
coming to the brow of the precipice, it was a 
grand spectacle to see twenty or thirty of these 
great birds start heavily from their resting-place 
and wheel away in majestic circles.—Darwin. 

Cone, one of the geometrical solids. A 
right circular cone is a solid occupying the 
space through which a right-angled tri¬ 
angle passes when swung clear around on 
one leg; that is to say, when it turns on 
its heel. The discussion which follows 
pertains to a cone of this sort, not to an 
oblique cone. The base of a cone is circu¬ 
lar. The opposite point is called the apex. 
If a portion next the apex be cut off by a 
plane, the remainder is a truncated cone. 
The volume of a frustrum may be found 
by subtracting from the volume of the com¬ 
plete cone the volume of the portion that 
has been removed. The lateral surface of 
a cone equals the product of the circum¬ 
ference of its base by half its slant 
height. The solid content or volume of a 
cone equals one-third the product of its base 
by its altitude, not its slant height. 

Every section of a cone passing through 
the apex is a triangle. By passing a cutting 
plane through a cone in various ways four 
different sections, called conic sections, may 
be formed. They are the circle, the ellipse, 
the parabola, and the hyperbola. If the 
cutting plane be parallel to the base, the 
section is a circle. If the cutting plane 
pass obliquely through the cone, not paral¬ 
lel to the base, the section is an ellipse. If 
parallel to the side of the cone, the section 
is a parabola. If perpendicular to the 
base, but not passing through the apex, the 
section is a hyperbola. 

The circumference of the circle is, of 
course, everywhere equally distant from the 
center. Instead of a center, an ellipse has 
two points within, called foci. The sum of 
the distances from the foci to any point in 
the circumference is always the same. The 
farther the point is from one focus, the 
nearer it is to the other. In theory, the 


CONEY ISLAND—CONFEDERACY 


ends of the arc of a parabola will meet 
somewhere in space if sufficiently extended. 
Comets are supposed to move in parabolic 
paths, by virtue of which they come within 
our vision at; regular intervals of time. The 
cables of a suspension bridge when loaded 
uniformly are said by engineers to swing 
in the arc of a parabola. Leaving out of 
consideration the resistance of the atmos¬ 
phere, a cannon ball or a jet of water from 
the spigot of a barrel describes a portion 
of a parabola. In theory, the arc of the 
hyperbola is never completed. A projectile 
following a hyperbola would travel on and 
on into space and never return. 

Coney Island, a popular pleasure re¬ 
sort situated at the southwestern angle of 
Long Island. Suburban railways and lines 
of boats give ready access. Hordes of 
pleasure seekers from New York, Brook¬ 
lyn, and Jersey City frequent the resort 
during the summer season. Henry Hudson 
is reputed to have landed here in 1609. 

Confectionery, a general name given to 
a great number of sweetmeats, as candy, 
candied fruits, bonbons, caramels, sugar 
plums, and comfits. Originally the con¬ 
fectioner was a druggist who used sweets 
to disguise the taste of unpleasant medi¬ 
cines. The first candy then was medicinal, 
a nature still suggested by horehound, pep¬ 
permint, wintergreen candy, lemon drops, 
cough drops, and the like. The next step 
appears to have been the drying of fruits 
in syrup or sugar. England led the way in 
making “boiled sweets.” “Sweeties” is still 
the name used by British children. From 
England the making of candy spread to 
the continent. About 1850 candy appeared 
in Germany and in France, but the Amer¬ 
icans inherited a “sweet tooth” from the 
mother country at an earlier date. 

While it would be out of the question to 
enumerate the various kinds of candy, stick 
and drop, creams and chocolates,—a glance 
at the growth of the candy industry in the 
United States is instructive. During the 
half century elapsing between 1850 and 
1900, the 383 candymaking establishments 
grew to 4,297. Thirty-five million dollars 
of capital are now invested in factories. 
These factories use $45,000,000 worth of 
sugars, syrups, flavors, and other material, 


and produce $81,000,000 worth of candy a 
year. At retail prices the American people, 
counting men, women, and children, pay 
out about $1.50 per year each for candy. 
According to the last census 33,888 people 
were earning wages in candy factories. No 
doubt twice as many more are engaged 
the whole or a part of their time in selling 
confectionery. At a low estimate, one per¬ 
son out of a thousand earns a living by 
making, shipping, or selling candy. 

The production of American candy was: 


1850. $3,000,000 

1880 . 33,000,000 

1905 . 87,000,000 

1910 . 134,000,000 


Americans ate 2.2 pounds of candy 
apiece in 1880, and over 4.1 pounds apiece 
in 1907. In 1910 the United States con¬ 
sumed twice as much candy as all the rest 
of the world put together. 

Confederacy, The, a name given to the 
union of the Confederate States of Amer¬ 
ica. It was formed at Montgomery, Ala¬ 
bama, February 9, 1861, by South Carolina, 
Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, 
and Louisiana. Jefferson Davis of Missis¬ 
sippi was elected president, and Alexander 
A. Stephens of Georgia, vice-president. The 
Confederacy was afterward joined by 
Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, North Caro¬ 
lina, and Virginia. Missouri and Kentucky 
were prevented from joining by the efforts 
of the Unionists, aided by Federal troops. 
The capital was afterward removed to 
Richmond, Virginia. The constitution 
adopted was modeled on that of the United 
States. The president was to be chosen 
for six years, and was not eligible for re- 
election. Protective tariff, that is to say, 
a tariff for other purposes than revenue, 
was forbidden. Slavery was expressly 
recognized and safeguarded. The foreign 
slave trade, however, was prohibited. 

The secession of these states, and the 
formation of a new union was in itself an 
express declaration of state sovereignty. 
The framers of the new constitution in¬ 
sisted that the right of a state to secede 
went without saying. They incorporated 
no specific statement of the principle. The 
Confederacy included a population of 
about 5,000,000 whites and 3,000,000 






CONFEDERATE VETERANS—CONFUCIUS 


slaves. The government of the United States 
never recognized the Confederacy as a na¬ 
tion or its government as a government. 
It treated the people of the South as citi¬ 
zens in rebellion against the national 
authority. A cordon of ships and armies 
surrounding the Confederacy drew its lines 
tighter and tighter each campaign. With 
territory constantly diminishing, and under 
the necessity of defending itself on all sides, 
the Confederacy was practically in a state 
of martial law during its entire existence. 
Its constitution had little opportunity to be 
tested, yet its friends were of the opinion 
before the war ended that it did not give 
the central government sufficient authority. 
Certainly President Davis found it neces¬ 
sary to assume far more power than the 
constitution of the Confederacy contem¬ 
plated. 

Historians are inclined today to say that 
the Constitution left unsettled the question 
of the right of secession. Almost every 
important section of the country had threat¬ 
ened it at one time or another. By 1860, 
however, the people of the largest section 
of the Union had grown to regard the cen¬ 
tral government, that is to say, the presi¬ 
dent and Congress, as an authority to which 
each citizen owed personal obedience. The 
greater part of the Union had grown to 
consider the national authority superior to 
that of the state. That being the case, it 
was too much to expect that they would 
permit a minority, the small end of the 
country, to defy that authority. A citizen 
of Pennsylvania felt that a citizen of South 
Carolina must be made to obey the gov¬ 
ernment which he himself obeyed, and the 
North being stronger than the South, 
made the South do it. The Confederacy 
lasted a little more than four years. 

See Civil War; Secession; Toombs; 
Davis, Jefferson. 

Confederate Veterans, United, a pa¬ 
triotic society composed of veterans of the 
Confederate Army. It was organized in 
New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1889 for the 
purpose of renewing friendships formed 
during the war, gathering historical mate¬ 
rial concerning it, caring for the disabled, 
and assisting the widows and families of 
those who had lost their lives while mem¬ 


bers of the army. There are 1,600 local 
camps as they are called, the members of 
which number about 75,000. State organi¬ 
zations are known as divisions. The United 
Society holds annual reunions. 

Confessions of an English Opium 
Eater, an autobiographical work by Thom¬ 
as De Quincey, published in the London 
Magazine in 1821, and in book form in 
1822. This work won immediate success, 
and is by far the most famous of all of De 
Quincey’s writings. A second version, 
much longer than the first, but containing 
the whole of the earlier work, was written 
in 1855-6. The Confessions tells the story 
of the author’s own experiences in acquir¬ 
ing and overcoming the opium habit. In 
it is found some of De Quincey’s most val¬ 
uable writing. It is original, polished, 
poetical, and often humorous. The long 
digressions are all interesting, are held un¬ 
der the author’s control, and usually the 
return to the subject in hand is most happy. 
Hunter says, “It is only the story of the 
childhood of a man of genius; curious in¬ 
deed, full of strangely pathetic incidents, 
but, from the ordinary standpoint, morally 
blameless.” To the first part of The Con¬ 
fessions, as printed in the London Maga¬ 
zine, was appended the following editorial 
note, “The remainder of this very interest¬ 
ing article will be given in the next num¬ 
ber.” The October number accordingly 
contained Part II and Part III of The 
Confessions, with an editorial note by 
Thomas Hood as follows: “We are not 
often in the habit of eulogizing our own 
work, but we cannot neglect the oppor¬ 
tunity ... of calling the attention of our 
readers to the deep, eloquent, and masterly 
paper which stands first in our present 
number.” See De Quincey. 

Confucius, kon-fu'she-us (550-478 B. 
C.), a Chinese religious teacher. His 
Chinese name was Kung, to which fu-tse ', 
meaning reverend doctor, was added. Con¬ 
fucius is the Latinized form of Kung-fu- 
tse'. He was of royal descent, but was raised 
in poverty by his mother. He was educated 
for office in the learning of China. His 
first official commission was that of in¬ 
spector of the grain markets. He taught 
school for a time. One remark of his is 


CONGLOMERATE—CONGREGATIONALISTS 


worth remembering. “When I have pre¬ 
sented,” said he, “one corner of a subject, 
and the pupil cannot, of himself, make out 
the other three, I do not repeat my lesson.” 
At an early age he began to visit the vari¬ 
ous provinces, preaching a system of morals 
to which he won many adherents. Confu¬ 
cius is credited frequently with the author¬ 
ship of the nine classics which form the 
canonical books of the Chinese. Although, 
as compiler, commentator, or teacher, he 
left his impress upon all of these, he wrote 
but one, Spring and Autumn Annals, the 
last of the Five Classics. His disciples 
drew up his teachings and sayings in what 
are known as the Four Books, which, with 
the Five Classics, make up the nine canon¬ 
ical books. Confucius made no pretense to 
divinity. He taught a simple, plain code 
of practical ethics, remarkable for an al¬ 
most total want of theology or creed. “To 
give one’s self earnestly to the duties due 
to man, and, while respecting spiritual 
things, to keep aloof from them, that may 
be called wisdom,” said he. He has an 
immense following in the Orient. The ad¬ 
herents of Confucius, chiefly in China and 
Japan, are estimated at no less than 256,- 
000,000. See Chinese Empire; Litera¬ 
ture, Chinese. 

Conglomerate, a rock commonly called 
“puddling stone,” formed of pebbles 
cemented together by finer-grained rock 
material. Conglomerates can form only 
in shallow waters along shores, so when 
found in the strata of the earth’s crust 
they indicate that, in some past age, the 
waters here encroached upon the land. 
The pebbly beaches now being formed will 
become conglomerates when consolidated. 
This rock generally separates one geolog¬ 
ical formation from another. 

Congo, or Kongo, a river of equatorial 
Africa. The length is about 3,000 miles. 
In volume, the Congo is the second* river 
in the world, ranking ahead of the Missis¬ 
sippi, and next the Amazon. The Congo 
leaves Lake Bangweolo in northeastern 
Rhodesia, near the line of twelve degrees 
south latitude. It describes an immense arc 
to the northward, crossing the. equator 
twice, and empties into the Atlantic Ocean 
at the line of six degrees south latitude. 


The last section of the course is ten miles 
in width. The mouth of the river was 
known to the Portuguese in the fifteenth 
century. Settlements were made on that 
part of the coast. 

In 1876-7 Henry M. Stanley followed 
the outlet of the Bangweolo clear to the 
Atlantic Ocean. He was the first white 
man to visit the middle Congo, and, indeed, 
the first to make known that the head waters 
and the lower course of this river were one. 
Stanley desired to call the river the Living¬ 
stone. 

The Congo is navigable for seagoing 
ships to the port of Boma, 110 miles from 
the sea. A railway leads from Boma 
around 100 miles of cataracts to Stanley 
Pool. Pool steamers ascend for 1,000 miles 
farther to Stanley Falls. There are several 
large tributaries. It is thought that the 
main stream, with its tributaries, affords 
in all over 7,000 miles of navigable water¬ 
way. There are two rainy seasons, ex¬ 
tending from October to December, and 
from February to May. 

The basin of the Congo is too large to 
be described in a few words. Its forests 
rival those of the Amazon. The entire 
area comprises over a tenth of all Africa. 
Estimates place the population of this vast 
region at no less than 30,000,000, chiefly 
negroes, known racially as Bantus. 

French Congo lies on the north bank of 
the river, near the coast. Portuguese Congo 
or Angola lies on the coast south of the 
mouth. Belgian Congo comprises the 
greater portion of the interior, with a small 
strip along the river to the coast. A part 
of the head waters, as stated, lies in Rho¬ 
desia. 

Congo Free State. See Belgian 

Congo. 

Congregationalists, The, a religious 
denomination. The Congregationalists dif¬ 
fer from the Presbyterians less in point of 
doctrine than in form of church govern¬ 
ment. Each Congregational church has 
authority to elect its own governing body, 
select its own pastor, and determine its 
own form of worship. The Congregation¬ 
alists of England are often known as Inde¬ 
pendents. Congregationalism in America 
had its rise in New England in the settle- 


CONGRESS 


ment of Plymouth, 1620. Yale, Dart¬ 
mouth, Amherst, and Oberlin are among 
the older Congregational colleges. There 
are in the United States about 6,000 (6,012 
in 1909) Congregational churches, with 
over 700,000 communicants. There are 
as many now in Great Britain, Canada, 
Australia, and other English-speaking 
countries. The denomination is noted for 
intelligence and for activity in Sunday 
school and missionary work. See Pil¬ 
grims; Unitarians; Plymouth Colony. 

Congress, the lawmaking body of the 
United States. The Constitution provides 
that the Congress shall consist of a Senate 
and a House of Representatives. Our 
Congress is founded on the British Parlia¬ 
ment. The members of the British House 
of Lords hold their positions for life. Our 
senators are chosen by the legislature of 
each state for a period of six years. The 
members of the House of Commons are 
elected to serve for seven years, or until 
the ministers (cabinet) decide to dissolve 
Parliament and order a new election. Our 
representatives are chosen by popular vote 
to serve for two years. In order that small 
states may not be crowded to the wall by 
the large ones, they are allowed equal repre¬ 
sentation in the American Senate. The 
number of representatives sent by each state 
is proportionate to the population. The 
vice-president of the United States presides 
over the sessions of the Senate. The House 
of Representatives chooses a speaker from 
its own number. The life of a Congress is 
for two years, the length of time for which 
representatives are elected. A Congress be¬ 
gins with the inauguration of a president. 
There are two Congresses for each full 
time administration. The old Congress 
expires on the fourth of March in odd num¬ 
bered years. A new Congress, however, 
does not meet until the second Monday in 
the following December, unless called to¬ 
gether by the president. 

The legislative body corresponding to 
our Congress is, in Austria, the Reichsrath, 
or Imperial Council; in Sweden, the Diet; 
in Norway, the Storthing, or the great 
thing; in the Netherlands, the States Gen¬ 
eral; in France, the National Assembly; in 
Spain, the Cortes, or courts; in Brazil, the 
National Congress; in Canada, the Parlia¬ 


ment consisting of a Senate and a House 
of Commons; in the Commonwealth of 
Australia, the Parliament, consisting of 
the Legislative Council and the Legislative 
Assembly; in Germany, the Reichstag. In 
Italy the legislative body is a Parliament, 
consisting of a Senate and a Chamber of 
Deputies. Even Russia and Turkey have 
recently adopted constitutions and the Rus¬ 
sian assembly is known as the Duma; the 
Turkish, as Parliament. 

The following table gives the representa¬ 
tion of the states in the Sixty-Third Con¬ 
gress, commencing March 4, 1913. In ad¬ 
dition, a delegate with a voice, but no vote, 
was seated from the two territories,—Al¬ 
aska, and Hawaii. Congress consists, there¬ 
fore, of 96 senators, 435 representatives 
and 2 territorial delegates. The electoral 
vote is given as well. 


States 

Senate 

House 

Elec. 

Vote 

Alabama . 

. 2 

10 

12 

Arizona . 

. 2 

1 

3 

Arkansas .. 

. 2 

7 

9 

California . 

. 2 

11 

13 

Colorado . 

. 2 

4 

6 

Connecticut . 

. 2 

5 

7 

Delaware. 

.2 

1 

3 

Florida . 

. 2 

4 

6 

Georgia . 

. 2 

12 

14 

Idaho .. . . 

. 2 

2 

4 

Illinois . 

. 2 

27 

29 

Indiana . 

. 2 

13 

15 

Iowa. 

. 2 * 

11 

13 

Kansas . 

. 2 

8 

10 

Kentucky. 

. 2 

11 

13 

Louisiana . 

. 2 

8 

10 

Maine. 

. 2 

4 

6 

Maryland. 

. 2 

6 

8 

Massachusetts . 

. 2 

16 

18 

Michigan . 

. 2 

13 

15 

Minnesota . 

. 2 

10 

12 

Mississippi. 

. 2 

8 

10 

Missouri. 

. 2 

16 

18 

Montana . 

. 2 

2 

4 

Nebraska. 

. 2 

6 

8 

Nevada . 

. 2 

1 

3 

New Hampshire . . . . 

. 2 

2 

4 • 

New Jersey. 

. 2 

12 

14 

New Mexico. 

. 2 

1 

3 

New York . 

. 2 

43 

45 

North Carolina. 

. 2 

10 

12 

North Dakota. 

. 2 

3 

5 

Ohio . 

. 2 

22 

24 

Oklahoma . 

. 2 

8 

10 

Oregon. 

. 2 

l 

5 

Pennsylvania . 

. 2 

36 

38 

Rhode Island . 

.3 2 

3 

5 

South Carolina. 


7 

9 

South Dakota . 

. 2 

3 

5 











































CONGRESSIONAL RECORD—CONKLING 


States 

Senate 

House 

Elec. 

Vote 

Tennessee . . . 


10 

12 

Texas . 


18 

20 

Utah . 


2 

4 

Vermont . 

. 2 

2 

4 

Virginia. 


10 

12 

Washington . 

. 2 

5 

7 

West Virginia . 

. 2 

6 

8 

Wisconsin. 

. 2 

11 

13 

Wyoming. 

. 2 

1 

3 


— 

— 

_ 

Total . 

. 96 

435 

531 

Territories 



Dele¬ 

gates 


Alaska . 1 

Hawaii. 1 

Congressional Record, a journal of the 
proceedings of the United States Con¬ 
gress. Before 1799 the Senate held secret 
sessions only, but since then proceedings 
have been made public, except in the case 
of executive sessions, through the “Visit¬ 
ors’ Gallery” and the Congressional Rec¬ 
ord. The journal is not an accurate record 
of actual proceedings, for debaters may 
revise their speeches before they are print¬ 
ed, and speeches never delivered appear 
under “Permission to Print” as if they 
had been given on the floor and reports of 
debates are revised by participants before 
being printed. 

Congreve, William (1670-1729), an 
English dramatist. He holds first place 
among the writers of comedy during the 
Restoration period. The romantic comedy 
of which As You Like It is the best ex¬ 
ample had now gone entirely out of fashion. 
In its place, we find plots drawn often 
from Spanish and French sources, vivid pic¬ 
tures of the fashionable life of the times, 
a great deal of witty dialogue, with much 
that is cynical, coarse, and even immoral. 
The other writers of this group are William 
Wycherly, John Vanbrugh and George 
Farquhar. Congreve was “courted, flatter¬ 
ed, and famous” in his own day. He 
was supreme in the “comedy of repartee.” 
Love for Love and The Way of the World 
are two of his comedies. He was a friend 
of Dryden and paid high tribute to him on 
the latter’s death. See Drama ; Collier. 

QUOTATIONS. 

Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast. 

Defer not till tomorrow to be wise, 

Tomorrow’s sun on thee may never rise. 


Conic Sections. See Cone. 

Conifers (Latin, cone hearers ), a large 
and important family of shrubs and trees. 
They produce naked seeds protected by 
corky or resinous scales in the form usually 
of a cone. A few, as the juniper, produce 
berries. Most conifers are evergreen; that 
is to say, they retain their old leaves, usu¬ 
ally needle-shaped, over winter at least, 
until new leaves have made their growth. 
Conifers are not all evergreens. Tamarac 
drops its leaves in the fall. Comparatively 
few evergreens, holly for instance, are coni¬ 
fers; but the term evergreen has come to 
mean conifer and is so used in horticultural 
manuals, as an evergreen hedge, an ever¬ 
green windbreak, etc. In this use of the 
word there are about 300 evergreens in the 
world and about 100 native to North Amer¬ 
ica, with 300 or 400 nurserymen’s varieties. 
The beauty of evergreens lies in their nat¬ 
ural shape. They should never be trimmed 
up like an ash or an elm. Their green fo¬ 
liage is pleasing to the eye at all seasons. 
Evergreens distributed with judgment im¬ 
part to private grounds and dooryards an 
air of good taste, and give farms an ap¬ 
pearance of comfort and prosperity that 
can be had so inexpensively in no other 
way. 

Conjunctivitis. See Ophthalmia. 

Con'kling, Roscoe (1829-1888), an 
American statesman, born at Albany, New 
York, later becoming district attorney for 
Oneida County. He was elected mayor 
in 1858, in the same year was sent to Con¬ 
gress, and in 1867 was chosen for the 
United States Senate. He was a stanch 
friend of President Grant, being one of 
his main supporters for a third term in 
1880. With his colleague, Thomas C. 
Platt, he quarreled with President Gar¬ 
field, of Civil Service Reform fame, the 
senators insisting upon their right to con¬ 
trol federal appointments within their 
state. Both resigned their seats finally, 
and appealed to the next legislature for 
re-election in vindication of their attitude, 
but were unsuccessful. Mr. Conkling then 
practiced law in New York, declining the 
nomination for justice of the Supreme 
Court. His imperious disposition made many 
enemies. See Garfield; Civil Service. 














CONNAUGHT, DUKE OF—CONNECTICUT 


Connaught, Arthur, Duke of (1850-), 
an English soldier and statesman, gover¬ 
nor-general of Canada. He is Prince Ar¬ 
thur, the third son of Queen Victoria. Be¬ 
fore coming to Canada as successor to Earl 
Grey, his Royal Highness was first and 
foremost a soldier. He has served in va¬ 
rious positions of high rank in the British 
Army, and with his wife, Princess Louise 
of Prussia, has traveled extensively in out- 
of-the-way places, spending comparatively 
little time in England. Their three chil¬ 
dren were reared with great simplicity. 
When the Duke and the Duchess of Con¬ 
naught went to India, where he w T as to act 
as field-marshal, the children were left with 
Queen Victoria, who was living then in 
great seclusion. The youngest child, Vic¬ 
toria, is now of age. The duke is noted 
for his reserve, which some persons attrib¬ 
ute to extreme shyness, his hatred of pub¬ 
licity, and his great executive ability. 

Connecticut, kon-net'i-kut, a New 
England state. It lies on Long Island 
Sound, between New York and Rhode Is¬ 
land. With the exception of two jogs in 
favor of Massachusetts, the northern 
boundary is formed by the line of 42° 30' 
north latitude. The general outline of the 
state is an oblong, 88 miles in length, and 
of irregular width. Area, 4,845 square 
miles. Capital, Hartford. Eight counties. 
Population in 1900, 908,420. Two rail¬ 
roads with 4,072 miles of track. The name 
of the state is that of its principal river. It 
is a Pequot word, meaning the long river. 
Nicknames are “The Wooden Nutmeg 
State,” “The Land of Steady Habits,” 
“The Constitutional State.” 

The first account of the country was 
published by Hudson and Adrian Block, 
Dutch navigators. Plymouth Colony estab¬ 
lished a trading post on the Connecticut in 
1633. A permanent settlement was effect¬ 
ed in 1636 at Hartford, Wethersfield, and 
Windsor, by a colony from Massachusetts 
Bay. Trouble ensued with the Pequot In¬ 
dians, but, as the natives k were armed at 
best with bows and arrows, midnight mas¬ 
sacres and scalping were soon brought to 
an end. In May, 1637, Captain Mason 
and a band of ninety men armed with guns 
surprised the natives in their stockade at 


Groton, set fire to their wooden stronghold, 
burned them out like rats, and killed seven 
hundred men, women, and children who en¬ 
deavored to escape. The pious chroniclers 
report a cessation of hostilities. 

In 1639 the settlers, finding themselves 
beyond the jurisdiction of Massachusetts, 
adopted a constitution, said to be the first 
ever prepared for their own use by a self- 
governing people. Deriving all its authori¬ 
ty from the people, it contained many demo¬ 
cratic features, such as annual elections, 
and vote by ballot; but, upon the whole, it 
was made up by selecting the more liberal 
of the practices actually in use at the time 
in the Massachusetts Colony. In 1662 a 
charter was granted the colony by Charles 
II. Much against its will New Haven Col¬ 
ony on the sound was included. This char¬ 
ter was suspended for a short time during 
the administration of Andros. Otherwise 
it served as the fundamental law of Con¬ 
necticut until 1818. The oft quoted Blue 
Laws of Connecticut are now admitted to 
have been in part a mere literary forgery. 

Connecticut has a record for patriotism. 
A full quota of men and money was sup¬ 
plied during the intercolonial wars. At 
the outbreak of the Revolution Jonathan 
Trumbull of Connecticut was the only 
colonial governor in full accord with the 
American patriots,—the only one who was 
not asked or forced to resign. He sent 
forward men and provisions in a most ener¬ 
getic manner, and stood on such intimate 
terms of confidence with Washington that 
the expression, “Brother Jonathan,” is said 
to have arisen from Washington’s having 
referred to him, then governor, in that fa¬ 
miliar, trustful way. About the only rea¬ 
son for regret in this connection is the 
circumstance that Benedict Arnold was a 
native of this state, a fact that resulted 
in the disgraceful raids of Tryon and of 
Arnold himself, when seaboard towns were 
burned and the rules of civilized warfare 
disregarded. Although the War of 1812 
ruined a prosperous trade with the West 
Indies, local opinion was by no means 
unitedly in favor of the Hartford Conven¬ 
tion of 1814-15. During the Civil War, 
Connecticut furnished 54,882 volunteers, 
far more than her share. 


CONNECTICUT 


From the first, the state has been noted 
for frugality, industry, and thrift. Agri¬ 
culturally, the state may be divided into 
four regions. A sandy shore along the 
sound; the valley of the Connecticut; the 
uplands east of that river; and the region 
west of the valley. The valleys of the 
Connecticut and the Housatonic are noted 
for the production of a cigar tobacco. 
Small fruits, orchard fruits, and vegetables 
are raised for city markets. Dairying is 
an important industry. 

An unprofitable copper mine, opened at 
Granby in 1705, was the beginning of the 
manufacture of brass, in which the valleys 
of the Housatonic and Naugatuck now lead 
the world. The Yankee peddler, with his 
tin and wooden ware, is a product of the 
state, dating from 1770. It is but fair 
to say he peddled far better wares than 
are now on the market. The cannon, balls, 
chains, wagon tires, and camp kettles of 
the Revolution were made here from na¬ 
tive ore found at Salisbury. Paper, Ameri¬ 
can clocks, watches, sewing machines, vul¬ 
canized rubber, and electro-plating owe 
their early reputation to Connecticut. In 
proportion to population, more patents 
have been issued to the inhabitants of Con¬ 
necticut than to the inventors of any other 
state. 

Manufacturing has become the leading 
industry. Ships, cotton goods, locks, cut¬ 
lery, timepieces, thread, sewing machines, 
bicycles, carriages, hats, and brass and cop¬ 
per wire, are leading articles of manufac¬ 
ture, amounting in all to nearly $400,000,- 
000 a year. 

In return for relinquishment of territory 
in Wyoming Valley, Connecticut received a 
grant of 3,500,000 acres of public land in 
northeastern Ohio, including the present 
site of Cleveland. This tract was known 
as the Western Reserve. About half a 
million acres was given to those who suf¬ 
fered from the British during the Revolu¬ 
tion; the remainder was sold to settlers 
for the benefit of the Connecticut school 
fund. It now yields an income of about 
one hundred thousand dollars, devoted to 
the maintenance of common schools, high 
schools, an agricultural college, and three 
normal schools. Higher education is pro¬ 


vided for by endowed institutions, chief 
among which are Yale University at New 
Haven, Wesleyan at Middletown, and 
Trinity at Hartford. Despite the influx 
of illiterates to work in the factories, the 
percentage of those who cannot read and 
write is less than four per cent, a record 
excelled only by that of Massachusetts. 

Statistics. The following statistics are 
the latest to be had from trustworthy 
sources: 


Land area, square miles. 4,845 

Population (1910) . 1,114,756 

New Haven . 136,605 

Bridgeport . 102,054 

Hartford . 98,915 

Waterbury . 73,714 

New Britain. 43,916 

Meriden . 27,265 

Stamford . 25,138 

Norwich . 20,367 

Danbury . 20,234 

New London . 19,659 

Ansonia . 15,152 

Naugatuck . 13,133 

Manchester . 12,029 

Torrington . 10,808 

No. counties . 8 

Members of state senate . 35 

Representatives . 255 

Salary of governor. $4,000 

U. S. representatives . 5 

Presidential electors. 7 

Assessed valuation of property.$791,000,000 

Bonded indebtedness . $874,100 

Acres under plow . 1,000,000 

Corn, bushels . 2,000,000 

Wheat, bushels . ,8,660 

Oats, bushels . 316,000 

Rye, bushels . 203,000 

Tobacco, pounds . 22,110,000 

Horses . 52,000 

Mules . 278 

Cattle . 217,000 

Sheep . 124.000 

Swine . 46,000 

Miles of railway. 1,011 

Manufacturing establishments. 3,477 

Capital invested.$373,000,000 

Operatives . 181,605 

Raw material .$191,000,000 

Output of manufactured goods.$369,000,000 

Output of minerals . $2,721,000 

Quarry products . $1,050,000 

Teachers in public schools . 5,115 

Pupils enrolled . 195,738 

Percentage of male teachers. 7 

Average monthly salary of men teach¬ 
ers . $121.21 

Average monthly salary of women 

teachers . $52.64 

Average annual expenditure per 

pupil ...- ....---.... $34.7J 



















































CONNOR—CONSERVATIVES 


Connor, Ralph. See Gordon, Charles 
William. 

Consciousness, a term for which no sat¬ 
isfactory definition has been stated. When 
life or mind is aware of itself it is self- 
conscious. No one knows whether or not 
the lower animals are self-conscious, though 
many of their responses are strikingly 
similar to those the human animal makes 
during certain highly self-conscious experi¬ 
ences. An intelligent dog seems often to 
be aware of his own experiences. No one 
doubts that the lower animals are con¬ 
scious, but none can say how far down in 
the scale of life consciousness runs. The 
grass under his feet may be conscious for 
anything man really knows about it. 

But the word consciousness is popularly 
used instead of self-consciousness. A per¬ 
son is said to “lose consciousness,” or to 
“become unconscious” during sound sleep 
or when in a faint. What is lost at such 
times is self-consciousness. The stream of 
consciousness does not stop; it merely runs 
at slower rate or lower ebb. This lower 
ebb, when mind is not aware of itself, has 
been called the sub-conscious experience. 
Consciousness then is the larger term; it 
includes both self-conscious and the sub¬ 
conscious. Many of the vital processes seem 
to depend upon the stimulus or direction 
of the sub-conscious mind, so complete loss 
of consciousness would probably mean 
death of the body. 

Man knows nothing about consciousness 
as a thing apart from bodily activity, partic¬ 
ularly activity in the more complex nervous 
structures of the body. The materialist has 
declared there is no mental activity, or con¬ 
sciousness, without vibration or change in 
living nervous structures. While he cannot 
prove this, he can produce evidence to show 
that the more complex nerve centers are very 
active whenever the mind is aware of itself, 
that this activity subsides as self-conscious 
experiences cease, and that certain lower 
centers are mostly involved when mind 
sinks to the sub-conscious. Destruction of 
the body may mean annihilation of con¬ 
sciousness. This is one of the questions 
of the ages. 

Just when a human being becomes self- 
conscious no one knows. Many impres¬ 


sions are received subconsciously long be¬ 
fore a child is aware of itself, perhaps 
even before birth. It is not so important 
to know when a child becomes self-con¬ 
scious as it is to remember that he is al¬ 
ways conscious, that even during sleep 
sub-conscious mind is recording impres¬ 
sions which may help to determine re¬ 
sponses he will make during his most 
self-conscious moment. Unruly children 
have been helped to better living by means 
of positive suggestions given during their 
sleep. Much usually attributed to organic 
or physical inheritance is due to sub-con¬ 
scious impressions. On the other hand it 
is worth while to know that when the 
mind is aware of itself it can give sugges¬ 
tions or directions which will affect the 
activity of the sub-conscious experience. 
Since sub-conscious mind controls vital 
functions, the right self-suggestions accom¬ 
panied by belief in their power will im¬ 
prove health and increase mental activity. 
Many minds through fear of illness and 
expectation of failure are unintentionally 
giving themselves negative suggestions. 
Such suggestions determine sub-conscious 
attention, for attention is merely the focus 
of consciousness. A change in attention 
means a change in the stream of conscious¬ 
ness. Whatever the self-conscious mind at¬ 
tends to and expects, the sub-conscious 
seems bent upon bringing to fruition. 

Conservation of Energy. See En¬ 
ergy. 

Conservatives, in English politics, a 
name applied to one of the opposing polit¬ 
ical parties. It was a new name for an old 
party. It was applied to the Tories in an 
article by J. W. Croker in the Quarterly 
Review for January, 1830. Macaulay, 
writing for the Edinburgh Review in 1832, 
calls the name a “new cant word.” During 
the Reform Bill controversies the Tories 
won the new name of Conservatives fairly 
by the stubbornness with which they resist¬ 
ed change. Queen Victoria herself was in 
private a Conservative. The Conservatives 
made her Empress of India. Among the 
Conservative leaders were Peel, Derby, 
Disraeli, Salisbury, and Balfour, each of 
whom led one or more administrations. Of 
the Conservative ministries, that led by 


CONSTABLE—CONSTANTINE 


Disraeli was notable. By carrying out a 
brilliant foreign policy, he held a Con¬ 
servative majority together in the House of 
Commons for six years, 1874-1880. 

Constable, kun'sta-bl, Archibald 
(1774-1827), a Scottish publisher. Consta¬ 
ble was the original publisher of the Edin¬ 
burgh Review and of Sir Walter Scott’s 
poems and novels. A warm friendship be¬ 
tween publisher and author led to Scott’s 
admission to the firm of Constable and 
Company which failed for $1,250,000 in 
1826. Constable died of a broken heart, 
and Scott wore out his life in an attempt, 
largely successful, to pay off the firm’s in¬ 
debtedness. Several of Scott’s later novels 
were written to pay off this debt. 

Constance, German Konstanz, a city of 
Baden. It lies at the northwest end of 
Lake Constance at the outgo of the Rhine. 
Constance is an old city. In the sixth 
century it became the seat of a bishopric, 
which \yas suppressed in 1802. Constance 
was a free town of the empire down to 
1548. After the Reformation it was sub¬ 
ject to Austria; since 1805 it has been a 
town of Baden. Population, 17,000. There 
are cotton mills and important manufac¬ 
tories of chemicals and carpets. There is 
frequent steamship service between Con¬ 
stance and other lake ports. There are 
several lines of railway. Constance is the 
center of considerable trade. The city 
is situated beautifully on the immediate 
shore of the lake. Interest centers in the 
old buildings. The surrounding scenery is 
beautiful. Ranges of the Alps are in full 
view, but interest centers in historical build¬ 
ings. The cathedral is a Romanesque edifice 
with a Gothic tower. An open spire, pro¬ 
vided w r ith a platform, gives the climber a 
broad view of the town and lake. A town 
hall, ornamented with frescoes relating to 
the history of Constance, contains the mu¬ 
nicipal archives. Among other municipal 
documents there are 2,800 charters of the 
Reformation period. The museum, an old 
guild house of the butchers, contains a 
collection of lake antiquities and specimens 
of natural history. The Kaufhaus, or Mer¬ 
chants’ Hall, was erected in 1388. It con¬ 
tains a large hall, 156 feet long and 105 

feet wide, where the great Council of 
11-17 


Constance met, 1414-1418. The house in 
which Huss was arrested is marked by a 
portrait tablet. The room in which he 
was confined is pointed out in the old 
Dominican monastery now converted part¬ 
ly into a hotel. A large stone slab in the 
floor, fifty feet from the entrance of the 
cathedral just mentioned, contains a white 
spot which always remains dry when the 
rest is damp. Tradition claims that this is 
where Huss stood when sentenced by the 
council. A large boulder with inscriptions 
marks the spot where Huss and Jerome 
suffered martyrdom. See Huss; Jerome 
of Prague. 

Constance, Lake, a fine body of water 
on the borders of Switzerland, Germany, 
and Austria. Length, 40 miles; width, 9 
miles; greatest depth, 912 feet; altitude, 
1,385 feet. The Rhine flows through the 
lake from southeast to northwest. The 
waters of the lake are of a beautiful pale 
green hue, and are well stocked with fish. 
The waters are subject to a sudden rise 
due to some underground cause. In 1770 
a rise of twenty feet inside of an hour 
is on record. Commodious steamers ply 
on the lake. As the lake is neutral, passen¬ 
gers crossing it from one country to 
another are liable to have to go through 
the formality of having their baggage ex¬ 
amined. Of the numerous towns on its 
shores, the old town of Constance, situated 
at its outlet, is most noted. 

Constantine, surnamed the Great. Em¬ 
peror of Rome from 306-337 A. D. Under 
his rule the warring and seditious elements 
of the Roman Empire were subdued. His 
reign is noted for two events of importance, 
—the adoption of Christianity as the regu¬ 
lar religion of the empire, and the removal 
of the capital to Constantinople. In 313 
he issued the Edict of Milan. “We grant 
likewise to the Christians and to all others, 
free choice to follow the mode of worship 
they may wish, that whatsoever divinity and 
celestial power may exist may be propitious 
to all that live under our government.” 
This edict put an end to the terrible perse¬ 
cutions of the Christians, and marked the 
beginning of atrocious persecutions by 
them; showing that human nature cannot 
be changed by an edict. In 328 Constan- 


CONSTANTINOPLE—CONSTELLATION 


tine ordered the old city of Byzantium re¬ 
built. He named the city for himself, 
Constantinople, and removed the seat of 
his government thither. The arch of Con¬ 
stantine, erected in that emperor’s honor in 
Rome 315, is one of the best preserved of 
Roman antiquities. 

Constantinople, the capital of the 
Turkish Empire. Latitude, 40° N; longi¬ 
tude, 28° 59' E. It is situated on the 
European side of the Bosporus, between 
the Sea of Marmora and an inlet of the 
Bosporus, called the Golden Horn. The 
city has a water frontage on three sides of 
eight or nine miles in extent. The city 
proper thus occupies a triangular peninsula. 
Extensive suburbs are located across the 
Golden Horn and on the Asiatic side of the 
Bosporus. The city contains a great num¬ 
ber of fine mosques with dome-shaped roofs, 
the most famous, though not the largest, 
of which is the mosque of St. Sophia. It 
has twenty domes. It is said to be the most 
ancient Christian church in existence; but 
it was converted into a Mohammedan 
mosque in 1453. Its walls are decorated 
with frescoes. Another feature of the city 
is the bazaars. They remind the traveler 
of booths at the European fairs. The 
Grand Bazaar consists of several long ave¬ 
nues arched with brick and lighted by 
apertures in the vaulted roof. Cross-legged 
Turks sit smoking their pipes, waiting for 
custom. They ask several prices for 
their goods, but are willing to take what 
is right. Ribbons, gems, clothing, per¬ 
fumes, embroidery, lace, silk, rugs, in fact 
all sorts of oriental goods, are exposed in 
a bewildering and attractive array. One 
needs to leave his money at the hotel, in 
order not to spend it. Perhaps the chief 
center of attraction, to European visitors 
at least, is the sultan’s palace or seraglio. 
It commands a magnificent view of the 
Bosporus, the Golden Horn, and the cy¬ 
press-covered hills of Scutari. The palace, 
with its grounds, occupies a large area, in¬ 
cluding gardens and groves. The sultan’s 
many wives live within a harem, sur¬ 
rounded by beautiful landscape gardens. 
The principal entrance is known as the 
Sublime Porte, a term not infrequently ap¬ 
plied to the sultan himself. It means 


simply the high door, or lofty entrance. 
Aside from the attractions mentioned, the 
city is a tangle of narrow, dark, incredibly 
filthy, ill paved streets, running in the most 
irregular fashion. The city is abundantly 
provided with good water from public 
fountains, whence it is carried into the 
houses for domestic purposes. 

The Golden Horn is the port of the city. 
It is about six miles long and half a mile 
wide. Vessels from the Black Sea, the 
Mediterranean, and London crowd its 
wharves. Forty-two vessels on an average 
come in daily. Immense quantities of 
wheat, iron, furs, tallow, lumber, cotton 
cloth, woolen goods, silks, jewelry, grocer¬ 
ies of various sorts, furniture, oriental rugs, 
wool, and dyestuffs change hands here 
annually. 

Constantinople is connected by rail with 
Vienna, Paris, and other capitals 1 of con¬ 
tinental Europe. Railways starting from 
the other shore of the Bosporus are under 
way; one for Mecca and another for Bag¬ 
dad and the head of the Persian Gulf. 

The city was besieged often by the 
Turks, but was not taken by them until 
May, 1453. The inhabitants are a mixture 
of Greeks, Jews, Armenians, Arabians, in 
fact of all nations. The dominant element, 
however, is the Turk. The Greeks, Jews, 
and Armenians are required to reside in 
special parts of the city. The estimated 
population is about 1,200,000. 

See Constantine; Turkey ; Bosporus. 

Constellation, a group of stars. One 
observing the sky on a clear night cannot 
fail to observe that the bright stars form 
more or less noticeable groups. The best 
known to young people is perhaps that of 
the Great Dipper, the outer stars of which 
point to the pole star. The belt of stars 
through which the sun appears to move an¬ 
nually was divided into twelve groups or 
constellations, probably by the Babylo¬ 
nians, certainly prior to the earliest extant 
history. The earliest works on the subject, 
of which we have any knowledge, were 
written in the fourth century before Christ. 
The earliest astronomical writing that has 
been preserved is a star catalog called the 
Almagest. It was prepared by Ptolemy, 
the Greek professor of astronomy at Alex- 


CONSTITUTION 


andria, about 120-150 A. D. His catalog 
contains over a thousand stars divided 
into forty-eight constellations. This an¬ 
cient grouping has never been disturbed 
seriously. Astronomical maps of the pres¬ 
ent day adopt the groups and use the 
names given by Ptolemy. The principal ad¬ 
ditions are those in the southern hemi¬ 
sphere, which were not known to the Greek 
writer. The entire sky has now been plot¬ 
ted off and given names. In all, the addi¬ 
tions have brought up the number of con¬ 
stellations to eighty-nine. Most of Ptolemy’s 
names were derived from Greek mythology. 

Constitution, the fundamental law of 
a country. In American usage, the body 
of laws' that define and limit the powers 
of government. It is a principle of mod¬ 
ern constitutional law that whatever power 
or authority is not granted expressly to the 
government by constitution is retained by 
the people. The older, we may say, for 
example, the Russian, theory is that all au¬ 
thority or privilege not granted to the peo¬ 
ple is retained by the sovereign. Some¬ 
times a constitution, as that of Canada or 
the United States, is written; sometimes 
it has grown up, largely by general under¬ 
standing, as in England. It is very im¬ 
portant that a country should have a con¬ 
stitution. Until very recently Russia was 
the most prominent example of a country 
without a constitution. The laws of that 
country were such as the emperor, acting 
under the advice of his intimate friends, 
might wish to make. They could be chang¬ 
ed or suspended at his will. If he or his 
officers ordered cannon to be discharged 
into the peasants on the streets of St. 
Petersburg, there was no law of the land 
to bring the offenders to account. If .the 
czar was satisfied, no one could interfere 
by law; while if a nihilist threw a bomb 
under the carriage of a prince, and blew 
him into eternity, the czar had full au¬ 
thority to order the wretch "executed, with 
or without trial, and from his decision there 
was no appeal. Without a constitution, the 
crimes of a ruler cannot be punished legal¬ 
ly by the people. Absolute rulers have it 
in their power, not only to punish, but to 
determine whether the acts of the people 
are legal or illegal. 


The Constitution of the United States 
was drawn up by a convention of fifty- 
five members, representing twelve of the 
thirteen states. It met in the city of Phil¬ 
adelphia, and was presided over by George 
Washington. The convention Avas called 
to meet May 14, 1787, but a quorum was 
not secured until May 25th. Its work was 
completed September 17th. The legislature 
of Delaware was the first to ratify the 
Constitution. The adoption by New 
Hampshire, in June, 1788, made the Con¬ 
stitution operative. 

By the Constitution of the United States, 
the government is divided into three de¬ 
partments, the legislative, executive and 
judicial. The legislative department, or 
Congress, consists of two houses, the Sen¬ 
ate consisting of two senators from each 
state chosen by the legislature of that state 
for a term of six years, and the House 
of Representatives chosen by the electors 
of those states for a term of two years, 
the number from each state being propor¬ 
tioned to the population. Congress has the 
power to make laws, levy taxes, declare 
war, and exercise other powers not forbid¬ 
den to it by the Constitution. 

The executive power is vested in a presi¬ 
dent chosen for four years by an indirect sys¬ 
tem known as the electoral college. The 
vice-president is chosen in the same way, but 
has no power in the government except in 
case of the death or disability of the presi¬ 
dent. The president is commander-in¬ 
chief of the military forces of the nation, 
administers the laws, and appoints diplo¬ 
matic officers, supreme court judges and 
other officers, by and with the consent of 
the Senate. 

The judicial power is vested in a Su¬ 
preme Court, and in such other inferior 
courts as Congress may establish. The 
Supreme Court has jurisdiction over all 
legal cases arising under the Constitution; 
over cases in which the United States is 
a party; and over cases between the states. 

The states ratified the Constitution on 
the dates given below: 

1. Delaware .Dec. 7, 1787 

2. Pennsylvania.Dec. 12, 1787 

3. New Jersey.Dec. 18, 1787 

4. Georgia . Jan. 2, 1788 






CONSUL 


5. Connecticut .Jan. 9, 1788 

6. Massachusetts .Feb. 7, 1788 

7. Maryland.April 28, 1788 

8. South Carolina.May 28, 1788 

9. New Hampshire .June 21, 1788 

10. Virginia.June 26, 1788 

11. New York.July 26, 1788 

12. North Carolina.Nov. 21, 1789 

13. Rhode Island .May 29, 1790 

The first president elected under the 
Constitution assumed office at the city of 
New York, on the 30th day of April, 
1789. This Constitution consisted of fif¬ 
teen articles. The first ten amendments 
went into force September 17, 1791. The 
eleventh became effective in 1798; the 
twelfth in 1804; the thirteenth in 1865; 
the fourteenth in 1868; the fifteenth in 
1870; the sixteenth and seventeenth in 1913. 

Much has been said as to the sources 
of the Constitution. Fanciful comparisons 
have been drawn with the institutions of 
Greece, Venice, Rome, and Switzerland. No 
less a speaker than Gladstone has assumed 
that the Constitutional Convention did 
original work, and drew up a new constitu¬ 
tion without a definite model in mind. The 
plain facts are that the leaders of the Revo¬ 
lution did the most natural thing in the 
world. They followed the unwritten con¬ 
stitution of England, to which they had 
been accustomed, and the constitutions of 
the several states which had grown out 
of two centuries of colonial self-govern¬ 
ment. 

Consul, a commercial agent of a govern¬ 
ment. The consular service of the United 
States began in 1780. The present con¬ 
sular force includes consuls general, con¬ 
suls, vice-consuls, clerks, interpreters, and 
other subordinates. It consists of over a 
thousand persons. They are appointed by 
the president, with the advice and con¬ 
sent of the Senate. The consular service is 
in charge of the secretary of state. The 
salary of a consul general, that is to say, 
the consul in a metropolis, is $12,000 a 
year, from which the salary ranges to $3,- 
000. The salary of consuls varies from 
$2,000 to $8,000 a year. Those holding the 
lower salaried positions are permitted to 
engage in business for themselves. There 
were in 1911, 69 consuls general and 236 
consuls. The total salary list of the 
consular service is over $1,600,000. Fees 


collected by the various offices, however^ 
and turned into the United States treasury, 
reduce the net cost to about one-twelfth 
of that amount. In 1880 the United States 
government commenced the publication of 
a periodical called Consular Reports, giv¬ 
ing information sent in from the various 
consular fields. It is designed primarily 
for the benefit of merchants; but is sent 
free to those who seem likely to make good 
use of it. It contains a great deal of 
interesting information. School libraries 
should have it. 

The duties of a consul are of a varied 
nature. He is supposed to look after the 
welfare of American seamen, and to settle 
disputes between captains and their crews. 
He inspects the passports of American trav¬ 
elers, and assures the foreign government 
that they are genuine. He looks after the 
property of Americans who die abroad. He 
certifies that ships sailing for this country 
are in a sanitary condition, and that they 
carry nothing infected with plague. Much 
of the merchandise bought abroad must 
pay customs duty on reaching this coun¬ 
try, according to its value. The consul 
examines the bills of lading at the ports 
where the goods are bought and certifies 
that the prices named are those, in his 
judgment, actually paid; thus protecting 
the United States from imposition through 
false bills. He upholds the dignity of the 
United States. He is secure from arrest, 
and may display the national flag over his 
door. Theoretically, his office is American 
soil. Americans abroad may be married 
in his presence and receive a certificate 
from him to the effect that the ceremony 
was performed within the jurisdiction of 
the United States. The usefulness of a con¬ 
sul depends entirely on his character and 
ability. Sometimes he is in position to do 
more for the American flag than falls to 
the lot of the ordinary minister or pleni¬ 
potentiary. 

In China and Siam, the consul sits with 
the local judge in trying cases to which 
Americans are a party. In Persia and oth¬ 
er countries, Americans are subject to the 
jurisdiction of the United States consul, 
instead of to the local courts. These mat¬ 
ters are, of course, arranged by treaty. We 











CONSULAR SERVICE—CONTRABAND 


accord the same privileges to consuls of 
other governments that they accord to ours. 
See Ambassador. 

Consular Service. See Consul. 

Consumption, a wasting away of the 
lungs, due to the attacks of bacteria. The 
term is exchangeable with tuberculosis. 
A more modern term is the white plague. 
Children of consumptive parents are not 
born with the germs of consumption in 
their lungs, but they may inherit weak 
lungs. If, for any one of a number of rea¬ 
sons, the lungs are weakened and the bac¬ 
terium of consumption, or tuberculosis ba¬ 
cillus, is taken into the system, the disease is 
likely to become seated. Its progress is de¬ 
noted by coughing, raising, and spitting, 
hectic fever, weakness, and emaciation. A 
damp climate is favorable to the growth of 
the disease. Want of cleanliness, bad ven¬ 
tilation, match making, coal mining, glass 
blowing, weariness, long hours, bending 
over at work; in short, any condition, oc¬ 
cupation, or attitude that lacerates, cramps, 
or weakens the lungs renders one liable to 
attacks of the bacillus. While a perfectly 
healthy person is not subject to consump¬ 
tion, it is equally true that one in condition 
to take the disease cannot do so unless the 
bacteria from a consumptive person are 
taken into the system. Patients cannot be 
too careful, therefore, in the matter of ex¬ 
pectoration. It is estimated that a patient 
may cast off 2,500,000 germs in a day. In 
case a consumptive spit on the sidewalk, or 
on the floor of a street car, depositing germs, 
it is likely that in a few hours they may 
have dried up and be floating about in the 
air, ready to be drawn into the lungs of 
some person in physical condition to be¬ 
come infected. The mischief is done. Tu¬ 
berculosis is frequently acquired,—taken 
into the blood,—through the milk of infect¬ 
ed cows. If conditions are favorable the 
germs soon settle in the lungs. About 120,- 
000, or possibly 160,000 deaths occur 
annually in the United States from con¬ 
sumption. One authority hazards the 
statement that this disease is the cause of 
one out of every six deaths the world over. 
The period between the ages of fifteen and 
thirty seems to be the time of greatest 
danger. See Disease; Bacterium; Koch. 


Continental System, a plan formulat¬ 
ed by Napoleon in 1806-07, to destroy 
England’s commerce. Napoleon’s attempt 
to injure England by way of India had 
failed in the Egyptian campaign; the at¬ 
tempted invasion from Boulogne had re¬ 
sulted in the destruction of the French Navy 
at Trafalgar, 1805 ; the only effective 
means left was to destroy England’s com¬ 
merce. After Napoleon defeated Prussia at 
Jena and entered Berlin in 1806, he issued 
his famous Berlin Decree by which he de¬ 
clared all British ports in a state of block¬ 
ade, and all Britons found in France or its 
dependencies, prisoners of war. Great 
Britain immediately retaliated by an order 
prohibiting neutral vessels entering the ports 
of France or of any country allied with or 
dependent upon France. Napoleon then 
issued the Milan Decree whereby all vessels 
sailing from or to British ports, colonies, or 
dependencies were declared prizes of war. 
As Napoleon at that time controlled prac¬ 
tically all of western Europe, it meant the 
destruction of legitimate commerce; smug¬ 
gling was therefore enormously increased, 
and it is said that Napoleon’s soldiers, 
themselves, wore clothing smuggled from 
England. The system was abolished with 
the fall of Napoleon. 

Continuation Schools. See Schools. 

Contraband, articles in which inter¬ 
national law forbids traffic during a time 
of war. A neutral nation is forbidden for 
instance, to sell either party to a war guns, 
ammunition, soldiers’ clothing, or the like. 
If a merchant undertakes to supply these 
articles he does so at his own risk. The 
flag of his country does not protect him. 
A British or an American ship, endeavor¬ 
ing to carry contraband goods to the Ja¬ 
panese or to the Russians during the late 
war between these peoples, did so at the 
risk of the owner. Quite a number of ships 
were captured and confiscated. During the 
Civil War the Union troops were puzzled 
to know what disposition to make of slaves 
who came into their lines. The war was 
ostensibly for the preservation of the Union 
—not to free slaves. General B. F. But¬ 
ler refused to return the slaves to their 
Southern masters on the ground that they 
were “contraband of war.” This position 


CONUNDRUM-COOK 


had a good legal basis, since the Confed¬ 
erates used the negroes to build fortifica¬ 
tions, raise food for the armies in the field, 
and as teamsters and laborers for the 
armies. At the same time, the chief val¬ 
ue of this use of the phrase was in the ex¬ 
cuse it provided for not surrendering the 
fugitives. The term “contraband” was 
taken up by the newspapers and it clung to 
the colored people until the war closed. 

Conundrum, a puzzling query, the an¬ 
swer to which involves a turn of wit, usual¬ 
ly a pun. A conundrum proposes usually 
the discovery of a resemblance between 
things quite unlike, or the discovery of 
some odd difference between similar things. 

Q. Why is a blind beggar ungrateful? A. 
Because he would be glad to see the giver hanged. 

Q. How may a husband be made tender? A. 
By roasting. 

Q. Why do white sheep produce more wool 
than black ones? A. Because there are more of 
them. 

Q. Why does a duck take to the water? A. 
For divers reasons. 

Q. What state is round at each end and high 
in the middle? A. Ohio. 

Q. When is charity like a top? A. When 
it begins to hum. 

Q. What drums are never beat? A. These 
conundrums. 

Convict. See Prison. 

Convict Labor, the employing of pris¬ 
oners in productive work whereby they are 
kept from idleness and earn the cost of 
their living. There are three plans fol¬ 
lowed in the United States, the lease sys¬ 
tem, the contract system, and the public 
account system. The lease system gives 
the convicts over to contractors, who are 
thereafter responsible for their care and 
detention. There are two forms of this 
system. In the one the state furnishes the 
material and tools and the work is super¬ 
vised by the contractor; in the other, the 
piece-price system, this arrangement is re- 
• versed and the product is bought at a 
fixed price by the contractor. The public 
account system, which is growing in favor, 
has all material, tools, etc., provided by the 
state; supervision is by state officials, and 
the profits go into the state treasury. The 
lease system has little in its favor except 
that it often nets considerable sums to 
the state, for prisoners are often inhuman¬ 


ly treated, frequently escape, and come 
under the influence of no system of reform. 
It is used only in a few of the southern 
states. The contract system is economical 
but sometimes interferes with prison dis¬ 
cipline, particularly wffien an outside over¬ 
seer is in charge. The public accounts 
system avoids this difficulty, though it 
often places the warden in a difficult posi¬ 
tion—he is tempted to strive rather for 
financial success than for the reformation 
of his prisoners. The whole system of 
convict labor has met with opposition from 
both employers and labor unions, on the 
one hand because it affords the contractor 
using cheap convict labor an unfair ad¬ 
vantage, on the other because it tends to 
lower wages. See Peonage; Prisons. 

Convolvulus. See Morning Glory. 

Conway Cabal', a conspiracy formed in 
1 777 among officers of the American colo¬ 
nial army for the purpose of depriving 
Washington of command. The leading 
spirit was Thomas Conway from whom 
the intrigue takes its name. Gates had 
won a signal victory at Saratoga. By 
comparison Washington seemed far too in¬ 
active in the eyes of Conway and his 
friends and they planned to promote Gates 
to supreme command. The plot was dis¬ 
covered and broken up. 

Cook, James (1728-1779), an English 
navigator. He was born in an inland part 
of Yorkshire, but went to. sea when a boy. 
He entered the royal navy in 1755. Four 
years later he commanded a ship in the 
squadron sent to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, 
and distinguished himself in the operations 
against Quebec. His seamanlike qualities 
and his diligence so commended him that 
he was given the command of three im¬ 
portant scientific expeditions. 

In 1768 his ship conveyed a scientific 
party sent out to the Pacific Ocean to ob¬ 
serve the transit of Venus, June 3, 1769. 
Cook and his party took advantage of the 
opportunity to visit New Zealand and ex¬ 
plore the eastern coast of Australia. This 
is the basis of the large territorial posses¬ 
sions of England in that quarter. Inter¬ 
est in the Antarctic region having been 
aroused by the published accounts of the 
voyage, Captain Cook was sent with two 




COOKE—COOPER 


ships and a second party to coast the great 
ice barrier described in the article under 
Antarctic Continent. His investiga¬ 
tions of ship’s scurvy, the great pest of 
long sea voyages, and the use of vegetables 
as an antidote for salt diet, procured his 
admission to the Royal Scientific Society of 
which his fellow travelers, scientific men, 
were members. 

Captain Cook’s third voyage was made 
for the purpose of ascertaining whether a 
passage existed between the Pacific and At¬ 
lantic oceans by way of the Arctic regions. 
He set out in 1776, the year of American 
independence, showing that, in the British 
mind, the American war was but an inci¬ 
dent, not an engrossing struggle. He com¬ 
manded his old ship, the Resolution, and 
a second ship, the Discovery. On his way 
he discovered the Sandwich Islands, and 
explored the western coast of North Amer¬ 
ica, then unknown, as far as Kamchatka. 
The winter of 1778 was passed at Hawaii. 
When on the point of leaving, February 14, 
1779, Captain Cook went ashore and at¬ 
tempted to seize the person of the king to 
hold him as a hostage for the return of a 
stolen boat. The natives, ordinarily in¬ 
offensive, became exasperated, and attacked 
the small party of Englishmen, killing the 
distinguished navigator before he could re¬ 
gain the protection of his boats. Cook’s 
journal, supplemented by the accounts of 
his scientific associates, are among the most 
entertaining annals of discovery and sci¬ 
entific investigation. They are excellent 
reading. The expeditions he led reflect 
credit on the British name. The name of 
Cook is of frequent occurrence in any at¬ 
las of the Pacific and Antarctic regions. 

See Hawaii. 

Cooke, Jay (1821-1905), an American 
financier. He was a native of Sandusky, 
Ohio. In 1858 he founded the banking 
house of Jay Cooke and Company, of Phil¬ 
adelphia. When the Civil War broke out, 
and Lincoln called for troops and money, 
Cooke went about among his friends and 
raised $2,000,000 for immediate use. He 
was to the Civil War what Robert Morris 
was to the Revolution. He was entrusted 
with placing the immense loans needed by 
the government, and succeeded in raising 


the amount of $2,000,000,000, a feat un¬ 
equaled in the history of finance. His 
charges for the work were moderate. At 
the close of the war his firm undertook to 
furnish the means to build the Northern 
Pacific railroad. Jay Cooke was president 
of the road. His firm failed in the hard 
times of 1873, precipitating a panic. Cooke 
afterward made himself comfortable by 
wise investments in Western land, but he 
made no effort to reestablish himself as a 
leader in finance. His reputation is that 
of a genial, upright, patriotic man—one 
whom his neighbors liked to see prosper. 

Cooke, Rose Terry (1827-1892), an 
American poet and novelist. She was born 
in Connecticut. Her first volume of poems 
was published in 1860. She was one of the 
contributors to the Atlantic Monthly in 
the early days of that magazine. Her 
stories treat of New England life. Happy 
Dodd, Steadfast, and Huckleberries, may 
be mentioned among her prose writings. 
The Two Villages is the best known of 
her many poems. 

Cookery. See Domestic Science. 

Coolidge, Susan, a pseudonym of Miss 
Sarah Chauncey Woolsey. See Woolsey, 
Sarah Chauncey. 

Coon. See Raccoon. 

Cooper, one engaged in the business of 
making barrels, kegs, firkins, casks, butts, 
or hogsheads. The upright pieces form¬ 
ing the sides of cooperage are called staves. 
The swelling or bulge at the middle is 
formed by making each stave a little wi¬ 
der in the middle than at the ends. A 
skillful cooper shaves his staves, cuts out 
his heads, and makes the hoops all so 
exact that when he sets up the staves, puts 
in the heads, and drives on the hoops, the 
different parts are a perfect fit without the 
removal of a shaving. The tapering of the 
barrel enables the hoops to be driven on 
tight. The surface, being curved on the 
principle of an arch, is very much strong¬ 
er than the same amount of material in the 
shape of a box. If the staves shrink a 
little they can be tightened by driving up 
the hoops. Although the barrel is not a 
convenient receptacle for storage in a car 
or ship, no substitute has been found. Wine 
casks and beer kegs are made of great 


COOPER 


thickness to withstand the pressure of the 
fermenting liquid. Casks for vinegar, oil, 
and syrup require to be strong. Oak is the 
favorite material for all such cooperage. 
Nowadays cooper shops employ a great deal 
of machinery. In the making of flour bar¬ 
rels the only work done by hand is the 
handling of material and the setting up of 
the barrels. One of the sights of industrial 
Minneapolis is the continuous succession of 
flour barrels coming down a shute from 
the cooper’s shop into the large racks in 
which they are drawn by two-horse teams 
to the mills. The driver does not think 
he has a load until his rack contains 175 
barrels. The last United States census re¬ 
ports 2,146 cooper shops, with 22,938 wage 
earners, and an annual output valued at 
over $40,000,000. In 1908 a careful writ¬ 
er stated that the American demand for 
tight cooperage, chiefly from the distilleries, 
required the yearly manufacture of 267,- 
827,000 staves and 17,774,375 headings, 
valued at over $12,000,000. 

Cooper, James Fenimore (September 
15, 1789 - September 14, 1851), the author 
of the Leather stocking Tales. The Coopers 
were a Quaker family from Stratford-on- 
Avon, Shakespeare’s birthplace. Father 
Cooper was a New Jersey judge. He was 
a man of culture, wealth, and energy. He 
sat in Congress and was a leading Feder¬ 
alist. Mrs. Cooper was of Swedish descent. 
James Fenimore was born at Burlington, 
New Jersey, the youngest but one of twelve 
children. When he was a year old the 
family moved to what was then the western 
frontier of New York, and founded the vil¬ 
lage of Cooperstown on Otsego Lake. Here 
they lived for six years in a log house. 
Judge Cooper secured a large tract of land, 
and in time built what was known as the 
“Hall.” The old home is described in 
The Pioneers as Templeton. James came 
into contact with the Indians, and saw 
much of primeval life in the forests and on 
the rivers and lakes of that beautiful re¬ 
gion. He was fitted for college at Albany, 
and was sent to Yale at the age of thir¬ 
teen. Ere graduation day he was dismiss¬ 
ed in disgrace for engaging in college 
pranks. He then went to sea, and served as 
a midshipman and lieutenant. In 1811 he 


married a Miss De Lancey, sister of the 
Bishop of Western New York. Her fam¬ 
ily were Tories. Young Cooper left the 
navy, thus taking no part in the War of 
1812. For ten years he followed the pro¬ 
fession of a gentleman farmer. 

Through reading English novels he be¬ 
came fired with the ambition to write. His 
first production was Precaution, an Eng¬ 
lish society novel. It was received with 
some favor in England, but not at home. 
In 1821 he published The Spy: A Tale of 
the Neutral Ground. Inasmuch as no pub¬ 
lisher was willing to risk an American nov¬ 
el, Cooper published it at his own expense. 
The Spy made Cooper famous on both 
sides of the Atlantic. It was translated in¬ 
to all the modern languages of Europe, 
and even into Arabic, Russian, and Persian. 
For ten years he wrote rapidly. From 1826 
to 1833 he resided abroad at Paris, Berne, 
Florence, Naples, and Rome. Among his 
acquaintances were Sir Walter Scott and 
the Marquis Lafayette. Returning to New 
York he got into legal controversy with 
his neighbors relative to the use of picnic 
grounds which his father had granted to 
the public on certain conditions not com¬ 
plied with. Cooper’s life was embittered 
by local feuds. At death he enjoined his 
family to furnish no material for a biog¬ 
raphy. 

Cooper rests in the churchyard of Christ 
Church by the side of his wife. A mon¬ 
ument in Lakeside Cemetery near by was 
erected in his honor. It consists of a col¬ 
umn surmounted by a figure of Leather¬ 
stocking. Cooperstown is now given quite 
over to his memory. The steamers on Otsego 
Lake are named for characters in the Leath¬ 
erstocking Tales. Otsego Rock is noted 
as the traditional meeting place of Indians. 
Leatherstocking Falls and Leatherstock¬ 
ing Cave are pointed out to tourists as 
places of literary interest. 

Cooper’s experience in the navy fur¬ 
nished him the material for The Red Rover 
and other sea tales. His fame rests, how¬ 
ever, on The Spy and the Leatherstocking 
Tales. The latter should be read in the 
following order: The Deer slayer, The 
Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, The 
Pioneers, and The Prairie . Mark Twain 


COOPER—COOPERATIVE STORE 




and other critics have been pleased to 
make merry over absurdities, contradictory 
statements, and marvelous extrications from 
impossible situations. Indeed, there is 
abundant opportunity for such remarks, but 
Cooper is none the less first of American 
storytellers. He wrote at the same time 
Walter Scott was writing, and almost as 
rapidly. The Leatherstocking Tales are 
in their way as original, as distinct, and as 
great an achievement as the Waverley Nov¬ 
els. As characters of the rifle, the forest, 
and the canoe, Hawkeye and Uncas are not 
surpassed. 

There was a brilliant story-teller in Cooper, 
but there was also a prosy moralist and reformer; 
and when circumstances called the latter to the 
front, it went hard with the story-teller.—Bron¬ 
son. 

To the French and the Germans, to the 
Italians and the Spaniards, James Fenimore 
Cooper is as well known as Walter Scott. Ir¬ 
ving was the first American writer of short 
stories, but Cooper was the first American novel¬ 
ist ; and, to the present day, he is the one Amer¬ 
ican novelist whose fame is solidly established 
among foreigners.—Brander Matthews. 

Probably the best service a friend can do a 
friend is to point out his faults to him; and 
there is nothing for which America owes more 
gratitude to Cooper than for his faithfulness in 
this respect.—Noble. 

It must not be forgotten that the literary 
world is Cooper’s debtor for a new sensation. 
Leatherstocking and Long Tom Coffin are his 
invention. They may seem artificial now, but 
they were vivid characters once, and the most 
superior of us read their stories with breathless 
interest.—Shaw. 

He has drawn you one character, though, that 
is new, 

One wild flower he’s plucked that is wet with 
the dew 

Of this fresh Western world, and, the thing not 
to mince, 

He has done naught but copy it ill ever since. 

—Lowell. 

Cooper, Peter (1791-1883), an Amer¬ 
ican inventor, manufacturer, capitalist, and 
philanthropist. He was a native of New 
York. He had a very meager common 
school education. His father was a hat- 
maker, and he himself learned the trade of 
coachmaking. Among his inventions were 
a cloth-shearing machine and various me¬ 
chanical devices. He manufactured glue 
for many years. He constructed the 
first locomotive engine built in America. 


He took interest in the Erie canal, in the 
first Atlantic cable, and was the first to 
roll wrought iron beams for fireproof 
structures. In 1876 he received 100,000 
votes as the presidential candidate of the 
Independent party. He will be remem¬ 
bered as the founder of Cooper Union, 
which see. 

Cooper Union, or Cooper Institute, 

an industrial or technical school founded in 
New York City by Peter Cooper in 1854. 
Cooper gave nearly a million dollars for 
site, buildings, and endowment. Other 
members of the family have made various 
gifts which have been supplemented by 
Abram Hewitt and others. Andrew Carne¬ 
gie has given $600,000. Instruction is giv¬ 
en in engineering, electricity, chemistry, 
physics, astronomy, mechanical drawing, 
architecture, free-hand drawing, clay mod¬ 
eling, painting, music, literature, engrav¬ 
ing, and pottery. The institute has a mu¬ 
seum, an art gallery, a library of 40,000 
volumes, and a well appointed reading 
room. The enrollment of students is be¬ 
tween three and four thousand. Degrees 
are conferred in engineering by the Cooper 
Institute. 

Cooperative Store, a store owned and 
managed in the interest of customers. What 
are known as cooperative stores had their 
origin in Rochdale, England. Twenty- 
eight weavers decided to make an experi¬ 
ment to better the wretched condition of 
working people. They laid aside two pence 
(four cents) a week each, until they had 
$140 in hand. They rented a ground floor 
room at the rate of $1 a week. After fit¬ 
ting it up they had $70 left to buy stock. 
They started with a little flour, a little 
butter, some sugar, and a sack of oatmeal. 
They opened December 21, 1844. They 
sold only to members of their association. 
They charged $5 admission, payable at the 
rate of four cents a week. To each pur¬ 
chaser, with each purchase, a brass tag 
was issued, entitling the buyer to a share, 
according to the size of his purchase, in 
whatever profits might be made. They 
kept open at first two nights a week; they 
bought for cash; they sold for cash. No 
clerk hire was paid. Those who managed 
the store charged nothing for their services. 


COOPERATIVE STORE 


They bought pure goods; they sold at go¬ 
ing prices. The attractive feature of the 
store was profitsharing. The plan took 
well with the mothers; for there was a 
general feeling that shopkeepers lived at 
the expense of their customers. The store 
prospered. In the following March tea 
and tobacco were added to the stock. At 
the end of the first year there were eighty 
members. The stock on hand was worth 
$905, and the weekly sales amounted to 
$150. The store was kept open thence¬ 
forth five nights a week and Saturday after¬ 
noons. Butcher’s meat was added. ' 

The history of the Rochdale Coopera¬ 
tive store is exceedingly interesting. The 
business increased until the entire build¬ 
ing was occupied. In five years’ time there 
were 600 members. In the thirteenth year 
$400,000 worth of goods were sold. By 
this time, of course, a competent force of 
managers and clerks was employed at 
moderate salaries. All were stockholders 
in the enterprise. From the very first the 
store refused to handle any but the very 
best goods. It never cut prices. It never 
solicited custom. Working people in oth¬ 
er cities adopted the plan. It was extend¬ 
ed to many lines of business. In Great 
Britain there are now cooperative whole¬ 
sale stores, printing offices, banks, build¬ 
ing associations, insurance companies, 
farms, and factories. One cooperative 
printing office in Manchester covers a space 
as large as an ordinary city block. It is 
said to be one of the most efficient printing 
establishments in Great Britain. The 
stores resemble what are known as depart¬ 
ment stores in America. The largest es¬ 
tablishments issue enormous catalogs. 
Charles E. Russell, who has written inter¬ 
estingly on the subject, enumerates a num¬ 
ber of unexpected announcements to be 
found in one of these catalogs. Funerals, 
finished houses, automobiles, Chinese carv¬ 
ings, sharks’ teeth, jams, jellies, preserves, 
chewing gum, violins, brass musical instru¬ 
ments, evening suits, and stuffed birds, are 
included in the list. 

The Cooperative Store of Woolwich may 
be cited as an example of the extent to 
which the system has taken root. A cen¬ 
tral store, with ten branches, sells its mem¬ 


bers two and one-half million dollars’ 
worth of goods a year. Four and one-half 
million loaves of bread are baked and sup¬ 
plied annually. The society has over 500 
workingmen’s houses for rent. All this 
in a town having a population of 40,000 
people. 

The cooperative movement spread all 
over Great Britain and crossed to the con¬ 
tinent. Statistics for the opening of the 
year 1906 state that there are 8,000 co¬ 
operative societies and workshops in France 
and 800,000 members; 20,000 societies in 
Germany; 7,600 in Austria; 3,500, with 
150,000 members, in Switzerland; 1,152 so¬ 
cieties in Holland; 3,000 in Italy; 1,800 
in Sweden; 731 in Servia; 300 in Spain. 
One company in Bale, Switzerland, has 
20,000 customers, that is to say, members. 
An industrial society in Belgium has 17,000 
members and one in Brussels, 20,000. It is 
difficult to get complete statistics for Great 
Britain. There are city associations and 
rural associations. There are 1,637 city 
cooperative stores, with 2,200,000 profit- 
sharing patrons. They have a union, with 
a reserve fund of $12,000,000. Fully one- 
fifth of the entire population of England 
and Scotland is enrolled in the member¬ 
ship of the various cooperative associations. 
They are now so well supplied with man¬ 
ufacturing and wholesale facilities of their 
own, that they are practically independent 
of the manufacturing associations and 
trusts. It is now a matter of indifference 
to the cooperative stores whether the old 
handlers of the wholesale trade are willing 
to supply them. It is quite possible for 
members to supply their families with the 
necessities of life in which none but them¬ 
selves have made any profits. In 1902 
$45,000,000 in cash was distributed, that 
is to say, returned, to cooperative Eng¬ 
lish stockholders. 

In the United States cooperation has 
taken root chiefly in farming communities. 
A large number of creameries and farm¬ 
ers’ elevators are managed on the coopera¬ 
tive plan. There are also a number of co¬ 
operative stores, but, compared with those 
of Great Britain, they are small affairs. In 
Rockwell, Iowa, for instance, a small 
farming town, nearly all merchandise, in- 


COOT—COPENHAGEN 


eluding dry goods, clothing, groceries, lum¬ 
ber, grain, hardware, and stock is handled 
on the cooperative plan. 

See Grangers; Communism; Build¬ 
ing and Loan Association; Socialism. 

Cheap railway transport and better condi¬ 
tions of sale can be obtained if the farmers will 
combine. What has hitherto been lacking is the 
desire for combination, though in a few localities 
that defect is being slowly overcome. What char¬ 
acterizes the agriculture of the Continent is the 
prevalence of combination. Alike in Demark, 
Germany, France, Italy, Holland, Belgium, 
Switzerland, Hungary, Finland, Poland, Servia, 
we find a network of cooperative societies all 
over the country—societies for the cooperative 
purchase of seeds, manures, implements, and 
machinery, cooperative creameries for the produc¬ 
tion of butter and cheese, egg-collecting societies, 
societies for the sale of fruit or grain, export so¬ 
cieties, mutual insurance societies, and so on. 
This voluntary cooperative movement is gen¬ 
erally fostered by the State, and has received 
much aid from landlords and religious bodies.— 
Fabian Report. 

Coot, an aquatic bird with the habits of 
a duck. It is popularly called a mudhen. 
The American coot is fifteen inches in 
length. It has bluish, slate-colored plum¬ 
age, a black neck and head, and an ivory- 
white bill. In place of being webbed, the 
toes are fringed with greenish, curiously 
scalloped flaps. The coot does not take to 
wing freely, but patters along for a hun¬ 
dred feet or so, striking the surface of 
the water with the feet. It is a skillful 
diver, and, being worthless for food, it is 
bolder than the wild duck. The female 
lays from eight to fifteen buffy white eggs 
in a nest built of grasses in the reeds of a 
freshwater marsh. The range of the coot 
extends from Alaska and Greenland to the 
West Indies. The bird referred to in the 
lines from Tennyson’s Brook, “I come from 
haunts of coot,” etc., is the European cous¬ 
in of this bird. See Grebe. 

Copal, ko'pal, a hard, clear, amber¬ 
like resin derived from various tropical 
trees. It is found also in the ground in 
a semi-fossil state, deposited, no doubt, by 
decaying timber. The best quality is ob¬ 
tained from pod-bearing trees on the east 
coast of Africa, Zanzibar, and Mozambique. 
Dissolved in hot linseed oil or in spirits of 
turpentine, it makes a clear, transparent 
varnish of great beauty and durability. 
See Amber; Lac. 


Copenhagen, ko-pen-ha'gen, the capital 
city of Denmark. Latitude, 55° 40' 52" 
N.; longitude, 12° 35' 46" E. . It is situ¬ 
ated chiefly on the island of Zealand, here 
separated from an adjacent island by a 
passage that affords fine anchorage and a 
harbor for shipping. With its suburbs, 
the city had a population in 1906 of 514,- 
134, approximating that of Baltimore. The 
name is Scandinavian and signifies mer¬ 
chants’ haven. The city was founded in 
the twelfth century on the site of a fishing 
village. From the first it has risen rap¬ 
idly. It became the capital of King Chris¬ 
topher in 1443. 

Naturally enough, the city was never 
a favorite with the Hanseatic League, by 
which it was attacked several times. It 
withstood a siege from the Swedes in 1700. 
In 1801 the English under Parker and Nel¬ 
son destroyed the Danish fleet off Copen¬ 
hagen harbor to prevent its falling into the 
hands of Napoleon. The chief exports at 
present are such as might be expected from 
the metropolis of a dairy country—butter, 
cheese, beef, cattle, wool, and hides—as 
well as grain. There are ten distilleries, 
and many manufactories of porcelain ware, 
pianos, clocks, safety matches, sugar, and 
snuff. The trade with Iceland and Green¬ 
land is centered here. 

The city is a literary and art center. A 
national university, with museums, an im¬ 
mense library and a botanical garden, is 
here. Unlike many European universities 
it is open to students of both sexes. The 
public buildings of the city are not remark¬ 
able, but they are rich in art treasures. The 
royal picture gallery does not rank quite 
with that of Dresden and Florence, but it 
contains paintings by such masters as Van 
Dyck, Rubens, and Rembrandt. A Thor- 
waldsen museum, built after the somber 
fashion of an Etruscan tomb, shelters the . 
burial place and original models of the 
statuary of that famous sculptor. The 
round tower of Trinity Church is 115 feet 
high. Instead of a stairway it is ascended 
by means of a broad spiral roadway, up 
which Frederick the Great is said to have 
driven a carriage drawn by four horses. 

The Museum of Northern Antiquities, a 
large collection of weapons, tools, utensils, 


COPERNICUS—COPLEY 


hunting gear, coffins, burial urns, church 
vessels, inscriptions, ornaments, armor, 
tombstones, etc., 40,000 in number, the 
greatest and most valuable collection of 
ancient man in existence, is here. The 
relics are admirably arranged in order of 
time. The flint period is illustrated by 
flint implements, bones and shells from 
the famous kitchen middens, or refuse 
heaps of prehistoric Denmark. Relics of 
the bronze period indicate that the art 
of casting, learned from the south, was 
well developed. The peat moor and bogs 
have yielded many iron articles, including 
Roman coins, indicating intercourse with 
that people at an early date. The ex¬ 
hibit is very complete down to 1660. Other 
museums or departments exhibit the an¬ 
tiquities of the rude nations of Europe, 
Asia, and Africa, as well as of the navi¬ 
gators known in history as the Vikings. 

The vicinity of the city is attractive. The 
blue water of the sea, level drives, fine old 
beech forests, wayside inns, pleasure gar¬ 
dens, beautiful grounds, deer parks, and 
handsome residences render the neighbor¬ 
hood delightful. 

See Denmark. 

Copernicus, ko-per'nT-kus, Nicholas 
(1473-1543), a celebrated astronomer. A 
native of Thorn, Poland. Of German an¬ 
cestry. He studied at Cracow, Bologna, 
and Padua. Copernicus was a professor 
of mathematics at Rome, 1501, and later 
he became canon of a cathedral under 
his bishop uncle, his mother’s brother. 
Taking the hints given by Pythagoras, 
Copernicus spent several years in studying 
the apparent motions of the heavenly 
bodies, and wrote a treatise, first published 
at Nuremberg in 1543 giving proof that 
the earth and planets move around the sun 
as a center. In deference to the Church 
of Rome, from which he anticipated oppo¬ 
sition, Copernicus dedicated his book to 
the pope and put forth his theory as a mild 
suggestion with such proofs as had oc¬ 
curred to him. The central statement of 
the work is this: “The earth is not the cen¬ 
ter of the universe. It is only a satellite of 
the sun.” It is needless to say that the “Co- 
pernican System” was rejected promptly 
by the authorities of the day. It is said, on 


what authority we do not know, that Co¬ 
pernicus received the first copy of his book 
fresh from Nuremberg the day he died. A 
crater, 56 miles in width, of an extinct vol¬ 
cano in the moon has been named Co¬ 
pernicus in honor of the great astronomer. 
See Kepler; Galileo. 

Cophetua, ko-fet'u-a, King, in old 
English ballad, an African king. He dis¬ 
dains all womankind, but Cupid appears. 
“He drew a dart and shot at him.” Co¬ 
phetua then falls in love with a beggar 
maid, named Penelophon. He weds her 
and they live a long and happy life to¬ 
gether. Shakespeare alludes to Cophetua 
several times. In Romeo and Juliet oc¬ 
curs the line, “When King Cophetua loved 
the beggar maid.” Tennyson in The Beg¬ 
gar Maid has given a pretty, modernized 
version of the story. 

Her arms across her breast she laid; 

She was more fair than words can say: 
Bare-footed came the beggar-maid 
Before the king Cophetua. 

In robe and gown the king stept down, 

To meet and greet her on her way; 

“It is no wonder,” said the lords, 

“She is more beautiful than day.” 

As shines the moon in clouded skies, 

She in her poor attire was seen : 

One praised her ankles, one her eyes, 

One her dark hair and lovesome mien. 

So sweet a face, such angel grace, 

In all that land had never been : 

Cophetua sware a royal oath : 

“This beggar maid shall be my queen!” 

Copley, John Singleton (1737-1815), 
an American historical painter. He was 
born in Boston of Irish parentage and died 
in London, where he had resided for some 
years. Although called an American art¬ 
ist, his subjects, his associations, and his 
sympathies w r ere British. At an early age, 
he showed talent for drawing. He was 
self educated. His first reputation in Eng¬ 
land was made by a picture called The 
Boy and the Squirrel, which he sent 
anonymously to Benjamin West, who ex¬ 
hibited it at the Society of Arts in 1860. 
It was praised highly by the best English 
artists. In 1783 Copley was elected a 
member of the Royal Academy. Some of 
Copley’s most celebrated portraits are of 
the English Royal family. The Death 


COPPER 


of Lord Chatham, now in the London 
National Gallery, is considered Copley’s 
best work. His Siege and Relief of Gib¬ 
raltar is kept m the council chamber of 
the Guildhall. Had he returned to his 
native land and employed his talents on 
Revolutionary subjects, he would have at¬ 
tained a more prominent place in the 
history of art. Holmes in The Autocrat of 
the Breakfast Table alludes to Copley 
portraits: 

The great merchant-uncle, by Copley, full 
length, sitting in his arm-chair, in a velvet cap 
and flowered robe, with a globe by him, to 
show the range of his commercial transactions, 
and letters with large red seals lying around, one 
directed conspicuously to The Honorable, etc., 
etc. Great-grandmother, by the same artist; 
brown satin, lace very fine, hands superlative, 
grand old lady, stiffish, but imposing. 

The allusion is further explained in a 
footnote, as follows: 

The full-length pictures by Copley I was 
thinking of are such as may be seen in the 
Memorial Hall of Harvard University, but many 
are to be met with in different parts of New 
England, sometimes in the possession of the poor 
descendants of the rich gentlefolks in lace ruffles 
and glistening satins, grandees and grand dames 
of the ante-Revolutionary period. 

Copper, a hard, reddish metal. Pure 
copper is one of the chemical elements. 
Symbol, Cu., atomic weight, 63.6; density, 
8.9. Copper is one of the most useful 
metals. It is rolled or hammered into thin 
sheets, and may be drawn into slender 
ware of great strength. A copper rod one 
square inch in section is capable of sus¬ 
taining a weight of 80,000 or even 90,- 
000 pounds. Copper does not tarnish in 
dry air, but in moist air it becomes cov¬ 
ered with a coating of green. Copper 
forms poisonous compounds. Vegetables 
of all sorts may be boiled safely in a cop¬ 
per kettle, but should on no account be 
allowed to stand in it. Vinegar should 
not come into contact with copper. The 
green rust which forms on the surface of 
copper kettles and on copper coins is a 
carbonate of copper. It is formed by the 
carbonic acid and oxygen of the air, 
which act upon moist copper. It is very 
poisonous; hence naked copper vessels 
would better not be used at all in cooking. 
Although copper is a poison, the human 


system seems to require a trace of it. 
Bread and nearly all ordinary foods con¬ 
tain from two to four parts of copper to 
the million. The tissue of the human liv¬ 
er. contains thirty parts to the million. 
Copper is found usually in compound with 
other elements. In union with carbon it 
forms a beautiful mineral known as mala¬ 
chite ; with sulphur and iron, it forms cop¬ 
per pyrites. It occurs also as an oxide, 
and in combination with sulphur. In 
these cases it occurs in fissures or veins 
in rocks. Masses of copper occur in con¬ 
glomerate rocks and in sandstones. This 
is the case in the Superior region and to 
some extent in Montana. 

Copper is distributed widely, but is found 
in paying quantities in few localities. The 
first American copper was found in Con¬ 
necticut. Montana, the upper peninsula of 
Michigan, and the mines of Arizona fur¬ 
nish half the world’s copper. The Michi¬ 
gan copper mines appear to have been 
visited by the American Indians in pre¬ 
historic times. Shallow pits were found 
by the white man from which the abo¬ 
rigines had apparently dug copper. Large 
blocks of pure copper had been detached 
and left by them. Copper ornaments, 
bracelets, rings, and anklets, implements, 
knives, awls, and axes, made, apparently, 
from Lake Superior copper, have been 
found in Indian graves and old dwellings. 
The most celebrated copper mine in this 
region is the Calumet and Hecla, which 
has already reached a depth of over 4,000 
feet, and has yielded as high as 63,000,000 
pounds of copper in a single year. The 
Anaconda mine of Butte has reached a 
depth of 1,000 feet. An entire granite 
mountain is seamed with copper and silver 
veins. It is the source of wealth on which 
the city has been built up. Montana has 
a reputation for having produced over 
340,000,000 pounds of copper in a single 
year. Utah, California, Oregon, Colorado, 
and New Mexico have deposits of copper, 
and even Vermont produced 1,200,000 
pounds of copper in 1892. About one- 
sixth of the world’s copper is refined by 
a single plant in Brooklyn. Of old world 
mines the most famous are near Seville, 
where a series of copper veins crosses the 


COPPERAS—COPRA 


boundary line between Spain and Portugal. 
Russia, Norway, Sweden, and Austria pro¬ 
duce copper. Italian veins were worked by 
the ancient Etruscans. The ancient supply 
of Great Britain was drawn chiefly from 
Cornwall. Copper is also produced in 
Mexico, Nova Scotia, the province of Que¬ 
bec, Cape Colony, Chile and Australia. 
A rather remarkable mine is found in Ja¬ 
pan. The world produces about 1,000,000 
long tons of copper a year. The United 
States produced 1,2 50,000,000 pounds in 
1912, nearly as much as was obtained from 
all other countries. 

Bronze of apparent Asiatic origin con¬ 
taining a little tin, was in use in Homeric 
times. Tools of copper in the form of 
bronze have been found in the lake dwel¬ 
lings of Switzerland. Although both cop¬ 
per and tin are soft, an alloy of these 
metals is hard. Cannon are made of an 
alloy of ninety parts of copper and ten 
of tin. Bronze statues are made usually of 
copper, tin, and zinc. There are'Over one 
hundred grades and kinds of bronze. Brass 
is also an alloy of copper with zinc, much 
used for builder’s hardware and for orna¬ 
mental purposes in machinery. Copper was 
once in great demand for sheathing the 
keels of vessels, but it has been supplanted 
largely by iron and by the substitution of 
copper paint. Copper is still used for 
plumbing and for roofing. Copper wire is 
strong and is an excellent conductor of 
electricity. An immense amount is used 
in the manufacture of telegraph and tel¬ 
ephone wires. Copper oxide is used 
to color glass a ruby-red tint. The an¬ 
nual consumption of copper for all pur¬ 
poses has increased faster than that af 
any other metal, and it is now estimated 
that the United States alone uses 1,000,- 
000,000 pounds per year. 

The price of copper has been subject to 
extreme fluctuations. During the past fif¬ 
ty years it has ranged from nine cents to 
sixty cents per pound, but of late the few 
really considerable copper mines have 
passed into the hands of owners who co¬ 
operate under an agreement as to quantity 
and prices. For some years the price of 
copper has been from twelve and, one-half 
cents to fifteen cents per pound. 


The North American production of cop¬ 
per for 1912 as estimated by the United 
States Geographical Survey: 

Pounds. 


Alaska . 

Arizona .... 
California .. 
Colorado ... 

Idaho . 

Michigan .. . 
Montana ... 

Nevada. 

New Mexico 

Utah. 

Wyoming ... 
Other States 


31,926,209 
359,322,096 
31,516,471 
7,963,520 
7,182,185 
231,112,228 
308,770,826 
83,413,900 
29,170,400 
132,150,052 
25,080 
21.715,752 


Total for U. S.1,243,268,720 


Canada. 77,775,600 

Mexico . 158,760,000 

American manufacturers import also 
from other countries. 125,000,000 pounds 
were imported from Mexico alone in 1912. 
The entire importations for the year from 
all countries were 410,240,295 pounds. 
The world production of copper for a re¬ 
cent year was: 


Pounds. 

United States. 1,243,268,720 

Spain and Portugal . 131,175,450 

Chile. 83,569,500 

Japan . 146,853,000 

Germany . 53,581,500 

Mexico . 158,760,000 

Australasia . 105,399,000 

South Africa . 22,491,000 

Canada . 77,775,600 

Other localities . 228,438,000 


Total of the world .2,251,311,720 

Copperas. See Vitriol. 

Copperhead, or Cottonmouth, a ven¬ 
omous reptile related to the rattlesnake and 
the moccasin. Its general color is cop¬ 
pery ; top of head, coppery-red; belly, yel¬ 
lowish ; length, up to forty inches. It 
is nowhere abundant. It ranges from New 
England to Wisconsin south and westward 
to Texas. The copperhead is an inhabitant 
of marshes and meadows, woods and rocks. 
It is not found in a prairie country. It 
lives on mice, frogs, and birds. During 
the Civil War, Northern men with South¬ 
ern sympathies were called “copperheads” 
as a term of extreme opprobrium. See 
Moccasin Snake ; Rattlesnake. 

Copra. See Cocoanut. 






























COPTS—COPYRIGHT 


Copts, native Egyptians. No doubt the 
Egyptians underwent more or less inter¬ 
mixture during the sway of the Roman 
Empire; and yet it may be said that the 
Copts are the descendants of the ruling 
class of ancient Egypt. The Copts have 
been overrun by the Arabs so long that 
their language is almost extinct. They 
have kept alive many customs however. 
Not infrequently a conquering people is 
absorbed by the conquered, as was the case 
in Greece and Italy and Spain; but the 
Copts have been losing to the Arabs ever 
since the Arabian conquest. At the middle 
of the nineteenth century they formed 
about one-fourteenth of the population of 
Egypt. 

Many of the Copts are now Mohamme¬ 
dans ; many others are Roman Catholics; 
but the majority are members of what is 
known as the Coptic church. Speaking 
strictly, the term is racial, but in ordinary 
use Copt refers to the church or denomina¬ 
tion. The Abyssinians are also adherents 
of the Coptic church. The head of the 
Abyssinian church is consecrated by the 
Coptic patriarch of Alexandria and ac¬ 
knowledges no other authority. The Copts 
are reputed to have been converted to 
Christianity by St. Mark. As compared 
with Protestant denominations, the Coptic 
church is an ancient one, dating as a schism 
from the Orthodox Greek Church in 451, 
before the final rupture between the Greek 
and the Roman churches. In foundation 
doctrine the Copts differ little from the 
Church of Rome. The head is the patriarch 
of Alexandria, who refuses all allegiance 
to the sees of Rome and Constantino¬ 
ple. The church has regular orders of bish¬ 
ops, priests, and monks. All but the supe¬ 
rior clergy are allowed to marry. These 
ancient Egyptians have been harassed by 
the Greeks, the Romans, and the Saracens. 
Like the Jews they have maintained their 
manners, features, and religion; but the 
Coptic language has been replaced by the 
Arabic, and is retained only in a few re¬ 
ligious ceremonies, just as Latin has been 
retained by the Roman Church. At the 
time of the Saracenic invasion of Egypt 
the Copts numbered perhaps two-thirds of 
a million people, but at the present time 


they do not exceed one-fourth of that num¬ 
ber. Many have become Moslems. The 
Coptic church shows some signs of dis¬ 
integration, in which case it is likely to be 
absorbed by the Roman Church. It has 
been suggested that the name Copt is de¬ 
rived from the last syllable of Egypt. The 
Copts of Egypt dress like Moslems, but 
wear a distinctive black turban. They are 
said to be gloomy, deceitful, and bigoted. 
They have black eyes and curly hair and 
are very expert in calculations. Like the 
Hebrews they take naturally to merchan¬ 
dising and to clerical work, rather than to 
agriculture. In the early days of the 
Coptic sect a considerable literature, con¬ 
sisting chiefly of the lives of saints and of 
religious homilies was produced. 

Copyright, exclusive ownership ac¬ 
corded an author or artist, corresponding 
to the patent of an inventor. The United 
States copyright office is in charge of the 
Librarian of Congress. The exclusive right 
to use, multiply, or sell a book may be had 
by sending this office two copies of the 
work with a recording fee of one dollar. 
A number of very important changes 
have been made in the law, first among 
which is a provision that copyright shall 
be obtained by publication with the notice 
of copyright, thus doing away with the 
preliminary deposit of a title in the copy¬ 
right office. Registration of copyright is 
now required as a step subsequent to publi¬ 
cation. United States copyright is issued for 
twenty-eight years, and may be renewed by 
the author or his heirs for an additional 
fourteen years. Copyright is designed to pro¬ 
tect not only books, but a map, chart, musi¬ 
cal composition, print, cut, etching, engrav¬ 
ing, photograph, drawdng, chromo, statue, 
statuary, or any art design, including de¬ 
signs for decorative articles such as tiles, 
or articles of pottery or metal. The regis¬ 
trar of copyrights has authority to reject 
any work which he may deem to lack origi¬ 
nality, or to be an infringement of the 
copyright of another. Over 90,000 titles 
are registered every year, with about 5,000 
rejections. It is illegal to print a copy¬ 
righted article without the author’s per¬ 
mission. Like any other theft, it renders 
the publisher liable to punishment; but if 


CORACLE 


an author neglects to copyright his work he 
cannot recover damages. 

International copyright arrangements 
have been entered into between a number of 
leading countries, whereby a citizen of one 
country may secure a copyright in all the 
others. Before the days of international 
copyright, American publishers were se¬ 
verely criticised, by English authors es¬ 
pecially, for pirating, as it was called, 
American editions without making the Eu¬ 
ropean author compensation. Foreign gov¬ 
ernments issue long copyrights. In Great 
Britain the term is for the author’s life and 
seven years after; but, in any case, the 
term is to be not less than forty-two years. 
Colombia and Spain issue copyrights for 
the author’s life and eighty years after; 
Belgium, Norway, Russia, Ecuador, and 
Peru, for the author’s life and fifty years 
afterward; Italy, eighty years and the au¬ 
thor’s life,—in any case, not less than the 
author’s life and forty years; France, Ger¬ 
many, Austria, Switzerland, and Japan, for 
author’s life and thirty years after; Brazil, 
Sweden, and Roumania, for author’s life 
and ten years after. 

The persons entitled by act to copyright 
protection for their works are: 

(1) The author of the work, if he is : 

(a) A citizen of the United States, or 

(b) A resident alien domiciled in the 
United States at the time of the first publi¬ 
cation of his work, or 

(c) A citizen or subject of any coun¬ 
try which grants either by treaty, conven¬ 
tion, agreement, or law, to citizens of the 
United States the benefit of copyright on 
substantially the same basis as to its own 
citizens. The existence of reciprocal copy¬ 
right conditions is determined by presi¬ 
dential proclamation. 

(2) The proprietor of a work. The 
word “proprietor” is here used to indicate 
a person who derives his title to the work 
from the author. If the author of the work 
should be a person who could not himself 
claim the benefit of the copyright act, the 
proprietor can not claim it. 

(3) The executors, administrators or 
assigns of the above-mentioned author or 
proprietor. 

This act gives authors needed protection. 


Not later than the day of publication 
in this country or abroad, two complete 
copies of the best edition of each book or 
other article must be delivered at the office 
of the Librarian of Congress, or deposited 
in the mail within the United States, ad¬ 
dressed “Librarian of Congress, Washing¬ 
ton, D. C.,” to perfect the copyright. The 
freight or postage must be prepaid. Books 
must be printed from type set in the United 
States or plates made therefrom. Without 
the deposit of copies required the copyright 
is void, and a penalty of $25 is incurred. 
No copy is required to be deposited else¬ 
where. The law requires one copy of each 
new edition wherein any substantial changes 
are made to be deposited with the Librarian 
of Congress. 

A copyright upon periodicals or com¬ 
posite works covers each part as well as 
the whole. The following works are sub¬ 
ject to copyright: 

a. Books, including composite and cyclopaedic 
works, directories, gazetteers, and other compila¬ 
tions ; 

b. Periodicals, including newspapers; 

c. Lectures, sermons, addresses, prepared for 
oral delivery; 

d. Dramatic or dramatico-musical composi¬ 
tions ; 

e. Musical compositions; 

f. Maps; 

g. Works of art; models or designs of works 
of art; 

h. Reproductions of a work of art; 

i. Drawings or plastic works of a scientific or 
technical character; 

j. Photographs; 

k. Prints and pictorial illustrations. 

Coracle, an Irish or Welsh name ap¬ 
plied to boats used by the native fishermen. 

A coracle consists of a wicker or basket¬ 
like frame, which in former times was cov¬ 
ered by the skin of an animal. This was 
the kind of boat found in use by Caesar 
when he invaded Great Britain. It is 
usually oval in form, and has the advantage 
of being very light. Although it will carry 
but one person, it is transported easily 
from one body of water to another. It is, 
in this respect, at least, to be compared 
with the birch bark canoe of the North¬ 
west. 1 he Mandan Dakotas navigated the 
Missouri in coracles covered with green 
buffalo hides. See Boat. 





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m 

li§§l 

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:LAi-- 

M 

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yj 


gm 

g§l|;v 

>.'\K •*•• • t"Si 4*i«V. ' VS'SS* 



|§||ggli 

\L issfif; JINr? 







11 


7 


9 


7. Vase coral. 8. Eye coral. 9. Creeping sea anemone. 

11. Sarcophytum. 12. Branching toral.. 13. Se^ anemone* 


10. Reef coral. 

14. Ammothea. 


11-18 


CORALS. 
























































CORAL—CORDELIA 


Coral, a limy secretion of marine ani¬ 
mals called polyps. These polyps are re¬ 
lated to the sea anemone, the jelly fish, and 
to the fresh water hydra. There are nu¬ 
merous coral-producing species. Though 
called a skeleton, coral is produced on the 
outside of the animal for a shelter, or home 
in which to live. A piece of coral is usual¬ 
ly the product of a large colony of polyps 
that bud or branch like trees. The coral 
of some species takes the form of a fan; 
of others that of a branching shrub or 
flower; or a mushroom; or a brain-like 
mass; or a bunch of moss. One might 
conclude readily that coral is a sort of limy 
moss or other vegetable growth; but in 
reality it is an animal production corre¬ 
sponding very closely to the shell of a snail. 
A coral mass consists of tubes in which the 
polyps find shelter. As the polyp extends, 
the tube in which it lives grows longer. 
The coral-producing polyps—they are not 
insects—appear to live on sea water. They 
require a temperature that never falls be¬ 
low 68°, a hard bottom to which to at¬ 
tach themselves, and sea water entirely free 
from mud or grit. 

No coral is found on the western coast 
of the two Americas. On their eastern 
coast it is confined to tropical waters ex¬ 
tending from Florida to Brazil. Red corals, 
much prized for necklaces and other articles 
of ornament, are found in the waters of the 
Mediterranean. Beautiful coral comes 
from Japan. Coral is found sometimes in 
masses of extraordinary size. In the 
southern Pacific and Indian oceans it not 
infrequently forms reefs from a few yards 
to many miles in length. The great Bar¬ 
rier Reef, thirty miles off the northeastern 
coast of Australia, is of coral formation. 
It extends 1,300 miles along the coast, 
with a total area of nearly 100,000 square 
miles. The water between the reef and 
mainland is seldom less than 36 feet deep. 
The outer wall of the reef is usually verti¬ 
cal. It has not been surveyed with ac¬ 
curacy, but in places it has been found to 
extend nearly perpendicularly 1,700 feet 
below the surface of the water. 

The circular islands of the Pacific known 
as atolls are also of this nature; the reef 
taking the form of the circumference of a 


circle, inclosing a round lagoon within. 
It was supposed formerly that the lagoon 
marks the apex of an island which has 
gradually subsided, leaving a fringe of 
coral which the polyps have built up and 
up as the bottom sank, but this theory of 
subsidence is now in question. The reef 
corals are built on the plan of six or some 
multiple of six; that is to say, the tubes 
are six or twelve sided. The other group 
of fan corals is built on the plan of eight. 
See Naples. 

Corday, Charlotte (1768-1793), a 
French heroine. She was of noble birth 
and was educated in a convent in Caen. 
She read Voltaire and other progressive 
French writers, from whom she imbibed 
the principles of the French Revolution. 
The bloody scenes enacted by the Parisian 
leaders filled her with horror. She decided 
to sacrifice her life in an attempt to strike 
at the center of the band of men who di¬ 
rected the Reign of Terror. She repaired 
to Paris, and on July 13, 1793, she gained 
access to the apartments of Marat, and un¬ 
der pretense of presenting a petition for 
signature, stabbed that monster to death 
as he sat in a bath tub seeking relief from 
an affliction. Two days later she was tried 
by the tribunal, and was sent to the guillo¬ 
tine. Her act reminds the reader of sim¬ 
ilar self-sacrifices made by Russian women 
who have carried out the plans of Nihilist 
leaders. See Marat. 

Cordelia, the youngest daughter of King 
Lear in Shakespeare’s tragedy of that name. 
Cordelia is introduced in the first scene. 
She does not appear again until the last 
part of Act IV. She speaks altogether but 
115 lines. Nevertheless, throughout the 
entire play we are continually conscious of 
Cordelia. This is due, not alone to the fact 
that the entire action is a result of her 
conduct, but as well, to her character which 
Shakespeare’s genius has “painted with few 
strokes yet vividly and perfectly.” 

The beautiful soul of Cordelia, that is little 
talked of by herself, and is but stingily set forth 
by circumstance, engrosses our feeling in scenes 
from whose threshold her filial piety is banished. 

\\ e know what Lear is so pathetically remember¬ 
ing ; the sisters tell us in their cruellest moments; 
it mingles with the midnight storm a sigh of the 
daughterhood. that was repulsed. In the pining 


CORDILLERAS—CORELLI 


of the Fool we detect it. Through every wail 
or gust of this awful symphony of madness, in¬ 
gratitude, and irony, we feel a woman’s breath.— 
Weiss. 

Cordilleras, a range of mountains. The 
word is Spanish, meaning originally a cord 
or rope. It is a general word like plateau, 
and is used by the Spanish to designate a 
chain of mountains. As a proper name, the 
term was first applied by the Spaniards to 
the ranges of the Andes, and was extended 
to the ranges of Mexico and farther north¬ 
ward. American geographers are now 
pretty well agreed to confine the term to 
the vast mountain system embraced by the 
Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada. 
The Cordilleras, taken in this sense, are a 
thousand miles in width in the latitude of 
Colorado, and extend from Central Amer¬ 
ica to Alaska. The Coast Range and the 
Cascades are included. 

Cordova, the capital of the province of 
Cordova, Spain. It is situated on the 
Guadalquivir about fifty miles above 
Seville. It is noted for the manufacture 
of leather goods and silverware. The city 
has an interesting history. It is the old 
Colonia Patricia of the Romans, a place 
of wealth and luxury. Seneca and Lucan 
were born here. The city is still surround¬ 
ed by a mighty wall and massive towers. 
Part of the wall is Roman. In 572 Cor¬ 
dova was taken by the Goths. From 756 
to 1051 it was the capital of Arabian 
Spain. Under the Moors the city walls 
were fifteen miles in extent, and the popu¬ 
lation is thought to have reached 1,000,000. 
The city was famous for Cordova leather. 
The Moors erected their chief mosque here. 
It is a magnificent structure. In plan it is 
nearly square. Eighteen rows of columns 
carry arcades, above which a second tier of 
arches carries the vaulting of the ceiling. 
In richness of decoration, mosaic, and 
sculpture, the work is said to surpass the 
Alhambra. The interior ranks the mosque, 
now a cathedral, among the vast structures 
of the world. A nearby cloister is known 
as the Court of Oranges. During the period 
of the Moorish occupancy Cordova was a 
center of Arabian learning, the most cele¬ 
brated center of the arts and sciences in 
Europe. Algebra, alchemy, and other sub¬ 
jects spread into western Europe through 


Cordova. In 1236 the city was captured 
by Ferdinand III of Castile, but under 
Christian ownership it declined rapidly in 
splendor, learning, and prosperity. The 
present population is about 58,000. Areas 
once adorned with fountains and expensive 
buildings are now used for kitchen gardens. 

Corduroy, a thick, corded, cotton 
fabric. It is used for the outer garments 
of laborers and those engaging in out-of- 
door sports. To a less extent, it is used 
for covering furniture and for fancy work. 
Corduroy is a pile fabric belonging to the 
same class as velveteen. The pile is pro¬ 
duced by an extra system of weft threads, 
which “float” over the ground cloth. 
These wefts are firmly bound in at inter¬ 
vals. The loops are left on the surface 
in groups to form the cords. Between 
these groups, the pile weft disappears into 
the ground web of the fabric. The loops 
in the center of a group are longer than 
those on the sides. After weaving, these 
loops are slit by the cutter, brushed up 
and closely sheared. Corduroy was made 
first in France in the seventeenth century. 
It was designed for the wear of the king’s 
huntsmen, the name, corduroy, meaning 
“king’s cord.” Corduroy has given its 
name to a kind of road constructed through 
swampy places by means of small logs laid 
close together crosswise, forming a solid 
but uneven roadbed. 

Corea. See Korea. 

Corelli, ko-relTee, Marie (1864-), an 
English novelist. She was born in Italy 
and became the adopted daughter of 
Charles Mackay, the poet. The name Co¬ 
relli was used in the first instance as a pen 
name, but has become her legal name. Her 
best known works are A Romance of Two 
Worlds, Bar abbas, The Sorrows of Satan, 
Thelma, Vendetta, The Mighty Atom. 
Miss Corelli’s stories have enjoyed a wide 
popularity, but it is doubtful whether they 
possess qualities which will give them per¬ 
manent place in literature. Some of them 
have a distinctly religious tone, having 
been written apparently with the express 
purpose of combating atheistic views. The 
best display some power in character draw¬ 
ing, great ease and freedom of expression, 
and are intense in feeling and sentiment. 


CORIANDER—CORK 


When the author strives for the dramatic, 
however, she usually reaches only the sen¬ 
sational. 

Coriander, a plant of the parsley 
family closely related to caraway, but 
growing taller. It is a native of the Med¬ 
iterranean region. The seeds contain a 
strong oil of characteristic taste, and are 
used, to flavor soups, cake, cookies, and con¬ 
fectionery. See Caraway. 

Corinna, ko-rm'a, a Greek lyric poet; 
ess of the first half of the fifth century 
B. C. She was born at Tanagara, Boeotia, 
She is said to have instructed Pindar and 
to have won the victory over him five 
times in the public poetic contests. Ac¬ 
cording to Pausanius, she was so beautiful 
that the judges may have been influenced 
in her favor. Only a few fragments of her 
poems are extant. 

Corinth, a city of ancient Greece. It 
was situated on a narrow isthmus of the 
name—a portage where the wares of Italy 
and the West were exchanged for those 
of Greece, Asia Minor, and the East. The 
neck of land is four miles wide. A strong¬ 
ly fortified citadel added to the importance 
of the city. It was at one time at the 
head of the Achaean league. The Corin¬ 
thian style of architecture was developed 
here. In its day the city was enormously 
wealthy, and was the most shamelessly 
profligate city in Greece. Paul’s Epistles 
to the Corinthians were addressed to the 
Christian church here. A few pillars and 
ruins deeply buried in sand are all that 
remain of the celebrated city. The old 
marketplace has been excavated. It lies 
sixty feet below the present level. A neg¬ 
lected village of a few thousand inhabit¬ 
ants occupies a part of the former site. 
A sea level ship canal has been constructed 
across the isthmus on which Corinth for¬ 
merly stood. This canal was completed in 
1893, at a cost of $11,000,000. In one 
place the canal passes through solid rock. 
Massive walls rise on either side to a 
height of 260 feet. The passage is lighted 
at night by electricity. Iron rings are 
provided at intervals to which ships may 
tie for safety—against the winds that at 
times blow through the cut with the vio¬ 
lence of a hurricane. 


Cork, the third city of Ireland. It is 
situated in the southern part of the island, 
about fifteen miles above the mouth of 
the river Lee. It is at the head of naviga¬ 
tion and has extensive wharves, but 
Queenstown at the mouth of the harbor is 
the port of call for ocean-going steamers. 
The city exports butter, eggs, bacon, grain, 
and live stock. Irish friezes and whiskey 
are made here. The population of the city 
and suburbs is not far from 100,000. 
Dublin is largely English. Belfast is 
practically Scotch, but Cork, the seat of 
the County Cork, is considered a genuinely 
Irish city. See Ireland. 

Cork, the spongy outer bark of an ever¬ 
green oak. The cork oak grows along the 
coast of southern Europe and North Af¬ 
rica, but chiefly in Algeria, Spain, and 
Portugal, to which countries the cork in¬ 
dustry is worth several million dollars a 
year. It is a low, spreading tree with 
chestnut-like acorns. When the trees are 
about ten or fifteen years old, the first 
stripping is made. It is coarse and un¬ 
even, and is used chiefly for fishing net 
floats and similar purposes. The second 
stripping is better. The quality improves 
with the age of the tree. Cork harvest 
comes in July and August. Only the outer 
bark is removed. Cuts are made around 
the tree and up and down, dividing the 
bark into suitable sections. The greatest 
care is taken not to injure the inner bark 
by cutting too deeply- The sections are 
then removed by inserting the flattened 
handle of the cutter’s knife carefully. Af¬ 
ter scraping the outer surface the sheets 
are heated and slightly charred to close 
the pores. They are then flattened in a 
press and baled for market. 

Owing to its toughness, lightness, and 
elasticity, and the fact that no liquid can 
pass through it, cork is in demand for 
bungs of casks, bottle stoppers, bicycle 
handles, shoe insoles, artificial legs, linings 
for insect cases, etc. Cork weighs a trifle 
less than a fourth as much as water. “As 
light as cork,” is a proverbial expression. 
It is, therefore, an ideal substance for life 
preservers, buoys, and jackets. The in¬ 
ner bark of the cork tree, like all oak 
barks, is valuable for tanning. Cork has 


CORMORANT—CORN 


a peculiar way of dulling a knife edge. 
Workmen who cut corks by hand whet for 
each cork. This difficulty is greatly in 
the way of contriving successful cork-cut¬ 
ting machines; yet but little of the work 
is now done by hand. Cork chippings and 
parings ground up with boiled linseed oil 
make a material which is applied to a 
coarse canvas in the manufacture of lino¬ 
leum. Scrap cork is pressed also in damp- 
proof and insulating boards. 

Consul-General Frank D. Hill, of Bar¬ 
celona, states that exports of cork from 
Spain during the years 1905, 1906, and 
1907 were $6,835,624, $7,626,494, and $8,- 
805,614 respectively. The total importa¬ 
tion of cork and manufactures of cork 
into the United States amounts to about 
$4,000,000 annually, one-half of which is 
the bark free of duty; the other half con¬ 
sists chiefly of corks, which pay 15 cents 
per pound duty. American statistics show 
yearly imports of about $500,000 worth 
of cork bark from Spain and over $1,000,- 
000 worth from Portugal, while about 
$1,500,000 worth of manufactured cork 
comes from Spain. 

See Lifepreservers ; Bottle. 

Cormorant, a family of fish-pursuing 
birds. Of thirty species ten are found in 
North America. They breed and fish in 
colonies, chiefly on the seacoast, but are 
found on large bodies of inland waters 
as well. They dive from the surface or 
from a low perch. The double crested 
cormorant, about thirty-three inches in 
length, chiefly black, nests in trees about 
the lakes of the upper Mississippi Valley. 
A colony nesting on an island in a lake, 
for instance, seems to map out the fishing 
waters. The females feed near the island; 
the males fly often several miles away 
each to his preserve. The cormorant pur¬ 
sues fish under water with inconceivable 
rapidity. The loon uses feet only, but the 
cormorant uses feet and wings. The 
feet fold when carried forward, and open 
during the stroke. The Chinese boat- 
dwellers train tame cormorants to catch 
fish. The cormorant sits on the side of the 
house-boat gravely watching for fish, 
which it is claimed he pursues to a 
depth of 100 feet, if necessary. A 


ring on the neck prevents the bird from 
swallowing the fish until fed by its master. 
The English nobility at an early date took 
fish in the same way. When at leisure a 
cormorant takes pleasure in playing with 
a live fish like a cat with a mouse. The 
fish is tossed into the air and caught again 
in the wide bill. See Pelican ; Anhin- 
ga ; Albatross. 

Corn, a term of varied application. 
Scriptural corn is barley or wheat. Wheat 
and other small grains are known as corn 
in England, and in Scotland it was at one 
time customary to apply the term to oats. 
American corn is Indian corn or maize— 
the Mondamin of Hiawatha. Quite re¬ 
cently a wild plant resembling maize has 
been discovered in the mountains of Mexi¬ 
co. The Indians call it coyote corn, be¬ 
cause the coyotes feed greedily on the 
young ears. Botanists consider it the wild 
ancestor of our cultivated corn. 

Botanically, corn is a grass, from three 
to sixteen feet in height. Corn has two 
kinds of flowers, the tassel which pro¬ 
duces pollen, and the young ear, the long 
pistils of which are known as silk. Every 
grain of corn has its thread of silk. The 
common axis on which the grains grow is 
known as a cob. The cob surrounded 
by grains is known as an ear. The ear is 
inclosed by long strip-shaped leaves known 
collectively as husks. The number of 
rows of grain on the cob is always an 
even number. 

Corn is native to Central America. 
Specimens were carried to Europe by Co¬ 
lumbus. It was cultivated by the aborigines 
of Central and North America, chiefly, of 
course, by the labor of the squaws. It 
will be remembered that the Pilgrims and 
the early settlers of Virginia obtained sup¬ 
plies of corn from the natives. Its cul¬ 
tivation has extended wherever climatic 
conditions permit. Argentina and Uru¬ 
guay in South America raise corn. Egypt, 
Italy, Southern Russia, Austria-Hungary, 
and the countries of the southern Danube, 
also produce considerable quantities. The 
flour merchants of Central Europe are 
supplied with cornmeal from the mills, 
chiefly, of Hungary. The great corn re¬ 
gion of the world, however, lies in North 


CORN 


America, east of the one-hundredth merid¬ 
ian, and between the thirtieth and the 
forty-fifth degrees of latitude. The area 
of greatest production, the corn belt prop¬ 
er, is a strip of irregular width, pass¬ 
ing from central Ohio westward between 
Chicago and St. Louis as far as the center 
of the boundary line which separates Kan¬ 
sas and Nebraska. Four-fifths of the 
world’s corn crop is produced in the Unit¬ 
ed States. 

The range of corn is determined less by 
soil than by other conditions. Corn re¬ 
quires a warm summer, but cannot endure 
extreme heat or prolonged drouth. Its 
northern limit is determined by the length 
of the growing season, as corn is easily 
frosted. Efforts to produce varieties that 
mature early have been made, with en¬ 
couraging results. The limit of profitable 
corn culture is 100 miles farther north 
than was deemed possible at the close of 
the Civil War. Other experiments carried 
on with intelligence through a number of 
years have resulted in improving the size 
of the kernel and general productiveness 
of corn. A good ear of corn may be de¬ 
scribed as tapering slowly, with a length 
of nine inches and a circumference of sev¬ 
en. It has long, wedge-shaped kernels, 
in from sixteen to twenty rows, with the 
tip well filled out, and a small cob easily 
broken out of the husk. One hundred 
pounds of such corn in the ear yield about 
ninety pounds of shelled corn. Successful 
farmers in the corn belt expect a yield of 
from 50 to 75 bushels of shelled corn to 
the acre, although the yield has been 
pushed considerably beyond the 100 bushel 
limit. The average yield in the corn belt, 
year in and year out, is 34 bushels. When 
planted 3 1-2 feet apart each way an acre 
contains 3,055 hills of corn. 

The world’s crop varies greatly from 
year to year according to rainfall, freedom 
from the attacks of insects, and lateness of 
the first autumnal frost. In 1899 the world 
produced 2,611,000,000 bushels; a year 
later, the combined yield of all corn-pro¬ 
ducing countries fell to a trifle over 2,- 
000,000,000 bushels. In 1905 the United 
States alone produced 2,707,993,540 bush¬ 
els. A recent writer has stated that if 


the corn crop of the United States were 
loaded on two-horse wagons, two tons to 
the load, and the wagons were to take the 
road, the nose of one team at the tail board 
of the wagon just ahead, the string of 
wagons would reach around the world six 
times. 

Methods of cultivation vary greatly. The 
settler in a timbered country digs holes 
with a hoe among the stumps of his first 
clearing, and drops three or four kernels 
into each, thus raising a few bushels of 
corn of great service to himself and family. 
In the corn belt, where fields are broad, 
level, and free from obstructions, the work 
is done almost entirely by machinery. The 
land is turned over with gang plows, 
drawn by from three to five horses. The 
seed is dropped by a cornplanter w r hich 
deposits a few kernels at regular intervals. 
The earth is stirred about the young plants 
and growing weeds are killed by the horse 
cultivator, or a series of small hoes swung 
from an axle and guided by the feet of the 
driver, who rides all day. The crop is 
cut with a corn harvester, that binds the 
stalks into sheaves and throws them off 
at one side. Husking by hand has been 
superseded in part by a cornshredder, a 
sort of threshing machine which shreds 
the stalks and shells and winnows the 
corn, delivering it into 6acks at one side, 
like a threshing machine for small grain. 
The average amount of human labor re¬ 
quired to produce a bushel of corn has 
been estimated at thirty-four minutes. 

Considerable corn is consumed in the 
manufacture of cornmeal and cornstarch. 
As a food, corn ranks next to rice in the 
number of people it supports. Eleven 
million bushels of American corn are taken 
annually by the distilleries. Some corn is 
exported, but the bulk of it is used at 
home in feeding hogs, beef cattle, and 
work animals. In the absence of wild hay, 
many sections of the country depend al¬ 
most entirely on corn fodder for rough 
feed. Intelligent feeders expect ten pounds 
of sound corn, fed under proper condi¬ 
tions to thrifty animals, to produce one 
pound of beef, five pounds of mutton, or 
four and one-half pounds of pork. Corn 
is, therefore, very important to the farmer. 


CORN LAWS 


Much attention is paid to breeding corn. 
Raisers of seed are as eager for superior 
ears as dairymen are for a superior cow. 
At the Ames, Iowa, corn show of 1908 
the champion ear sold for $28; the best 
ten ears brought $85 ; thirty ears sold for 
$65 and the prize bushel was bid in at $76. 
Secretary 'James Wilson of the United 
States Department of Agriculture, writing 
of the corn crop of 1908, says: 

Greatest of all crops is Indian corn, the price¬ 
less gift of the Indian, who freely gave to the 
white man information which led to the produc¬ 
tion of 2,643,000,000 bushels this year. The value 
of this crop almost surpasses belief. It is $1,- 
615,000,000. This wealth that has grown out of 
the soil in four months of rain and sunshine, 
and some drouth, too, is enough to cancel the 
interest-bearing debt of the United States and to 
pay for the Panama Canal and fifty battleships. 

The following statement shows the es¬ 
timated corn crop of 1909 by states and ter¬ 
ritories which may be considered fairly rep¬ 
resentative : 


Bushels. 

Illinois . 369,770,000 

Iowa . 289,800,000 

Missouri . 213,840,000 

Indiana . 196,520,000 

Nebraska . 194,060,000 

Kansas . 154,225,000 

Ohio . 153,062,000 

Texas . 122,250,000 

Kentucky . 103,472,000 

Oklahoma . 101,150,000 

Tennessee . 76,650,000 

Michigan . 69,950,000 

South Dakota . 65,270,000 

Georgia . 61,160,000 

Minnesota . 58,812,000 

Louisiana . 51,198,000 

Wisconsin . 50,589,000 

Arkansas . 50,400,000 

Pennsylvania . 48,800,000 

North Carolina . 48,686,000 

Virginia . 47,328,000 

Alabama . 43,646,000 

Mississippi . 40,745,000 

South Carolina . 37,041,000 

West Virginia . 27,632,000 

New York . 24,120,000 

Maryland . 21,980,000 

Other states and territories. 48,220,000 


Total .2,772,376,000 

1905 . 2,707,993,000 

1908 . 2,668,651,000 

1910 . 2,886,260,000 

1912 . 3,124,746,000 

1913 . 2,446,988,000 


The corn crop estimates given by the 
United States Department of Agriculture 
for 1914, which is a fair average, were: 


Country. Bushels. 

United States .2,676,000,000 

Canada . 16,773,000 

Mexico . 190,000,000 


Total North America.2,882,773,000 

Argentina . 196,642,000 

Chile . 1,500,000 

Uruguay . 5,359,000 


Total South America. 203,501,000 

Austria-Hungary . 196,617,000 

Bulgaria . 12,000,000 

France . 24,027,000 

Italy . 88,428,000 

Portugal . 9,000,000 

Roumania . 57,576,000 

Russia (European) . 50,764,000 

Servia . 17,691,000 

Spain . 25,372,000 


Total Europe . 481,475,000 

Algeria . 402,000 

Cape of Good Hope. 3,550,000 

Egypt . 35,000,000 

Natal .. 3,300,000 

Sudan (Anglo-l^gyptian) . 300,000 


Total Africa . 42,552,000 

Queensland . 3,820,000 

New South Wales . 5,945,000 

Victoria . 727,000 

Western Australia . 1,000 

New Zealand . 419,000 


Total Australasia . 10,912,000 


Grand Total .3,300,255,000 


Corn Laws, statutes designed to pro¬ 
mote or regulate the supply of breadstuffs. 
Corn is to be understood in the Old World 
sense of grain, chiefly wheat. That food 
might be plenty the Athenians forbade 
the outward shipment of corn (wheat), 
and required Athenian ships loaded 
abroad to carry wheat to the home country 
only. Rome enacted corn laws, even to 
the extent of giving grain to the needy. 

Corn laws form an important chapter 
in the history of England. From the time 
of the Norman Conquest exportation of 
corn was forbidden strictly. In 1436 if 
was decided to permit the exportation, so 
long as corn, i. e., wheat and barley, was 










































































CORNEILLE 


% 


cheap at home. In 1571 the government 
decided to revise the laws again. By this 
time three contending interests were ap¬ 
parent—working people wanted a cheap 
loaf; landowners wanted a high rental for 
wheat fields; and Parliament, in which 
land owners, but not working people, were 
well represented, required a revenue for 
the government. It was decided to allow 
the exportation of corn so long as it was 
cheap, and on condition that the shipper 
pay a tax of so much per bushel into the 
government treasury. This was a victory 
for the government. 

A hundred years later and after some 
tinkering, importation was prohibited, 
practically so, at least, by a high tariff, 
except as the price in England might rise 
above a certain high price. This was a 
victory for the land owner. In 1688, the 
year of the English Revolution, and sub¬ 
sequent years, land-owning interests again 
prevailed and the government undertook 
to pay a bounty on every pound of wheat, 
rye, oats, or barley shipped to foreign 
countries. After the Napoleonic wars, how¬ 
ever, the land-owning class was affected 
by the fall of prices consequent upon the 
close of the war. Parliament in the inter¬ 
est of this class, passed the Corn-Laws for¬ 
bidding the importation of foreign bread- 
stuffs until the price of the domestic grain 
reached a certain price. A little later, be¬ 
cause of the protests of the consumers, a 
sliding scale was introduced whereby it 
was provided that when the price of do¬ 
mestic grain rose above a certain point, 
foreign grain could be imported, but as 
soon as it fell below that price, importa¬ 
tion must cease. These laws worked great 
hardship to the factory class, a vivid ac¬ 
count of which may be found in Kingsley’s 
Alton Locke. They continued in force, 
however, in spite of the opposition of Cob- 
den and Bright until popular uprisings and 
the total failure of the potato crop in 1845 
convinced Parliament that it would be wise 
to permit the buying and selling of food¬ 
stuffs without restriction. This new order 
went into effect in 1849; since which time 
the foodstuffs of America have been sold 
in Great Britain free from all but nominal 
taxation, and for many years the mere 


cost of inspection. It is interesting to 
note that there is talk of a revival of Brit¬ 
ish import duties on breadstuffs. 

See Cobden ; Bright; Irish Famine. 

Corneille, kor-ne'yah, Pierre (1606- 
1684), a noted French dramatist and poet. 
He was a native of Rouen. He was edu¬ 
cated at the Jesuit College in that city, 
and was admitted to the bar in 1624. He 
held the posts of advocate to the admiralty 
and to “waters and forests,” for which 
he received, however, little remuneration. 
His profession seems to have brought him 
no other employment. His first dramatic 
production was Melite, a comedy produced 
in 1629. Melite was very different from 
the plays then in vogue, but it nevertheless 
scored a success and became popular. It 
was followed by others which, though now 
regarded unreadable, were at that time 
better than anything known. Richelieu 
appointed Corneille as one of his “five 
poets,” which meant that it became his 
duty to write tragedies whose plots were 
furnished by Richelieu. Corneille was of 
too independent a character for this work 
and soon incurred displeasure by making 
changes in the plots assigned him. 

In 1636 appeared Le Cid, a tragi¬ 
comedy. This has been called the most 
“epoch-making” play in all literature. It 
was based on the old Spanish romances. 
Its immense success aroused the jealousy 
of Richelieu and the French Academy, 
and a famous controversy resulted. For 
years the history of the French stage was 
the history of Corneille’s works. He is 
the father of French tragedy. Les Hor¬ 
aces, following Le Cid in 1639, shows 
greater power of invention than any other 
of Corneille’s plays. Cinna was produced 
in the same year and was considered by 
Voltaire his masterpiece. Others regard 
Polyeucte, produced in 1640, not only as 
Corneille’s best, but as the masterpiece “of 
Christian tragedy and the French theatre.” 
Other works followed rapidly, Le Menteur, 
the greatest of Corneille’s comedies, being 
especially worthy of note. And now be¬ 
gan a decline as “rapid as his success had 
been brilliant.” It is difficult to account 
for his loss of popularity. He doubtless 
feared criticism too much to allow himself 


CORNEL—CORNELL UNIVERSITY 


to be guided by his own genius. He had 
aroused envy and jealousy, and seems to 
have been angered at having to fight his 
way. From 1653 to 1659 Corneille de¬ 
voted himself to poetry and produced no 
dramatic work. Persuaded to change his 
resolve, he began dramatic work again in 
1659; but, although he produced several 
plays, they did not attain the celebrity of 
his earlier dramas. During the last ten 
years of his life Corneille wrote little. He 
suffered nearly all his life from poverty— 
at that time a playwright was but poorly 
paid—and toward the last he was well 
nigh destitute. Boileau, who had ever be¬ 
friended Corneille, persuaded the king to 
send him assistance, but he died two days 
afterward. 

There is a striking inequality in Cor¬ 
neille’s writings. While he has produced 
work that places him in the front rank of 
French dramatists, he has written much 
which is dull and tedious, showing no sign 
of genius. Moliere said, “My friend Cor¬ 
neille has a familiar who inspires him with 
the finest verses in the world. But some¬ 
times the familiar leaves him to shift for 
himself, and then he fares badly. Cor¬ 
neille enjoyed, however, immense popular¬ 
ity for a time, and always large apprecia¬ 
tion. Boileau, when asked concerning the 
great men of Louis XIV’s reign, replied, 
“I only know three, Corneille, Moliere, 
and myself.” “And how about Racine?” 
he was asked. “Racine was an extremely 
clever fellow,” he replied, “whom I taught 
with great difficulty to write verse.” 

Corneille was not personally prepossess¬ 
ing. Either from shyness, or pride, or 
both, he preserved a certain rusticity of 
manners and speech which tended to repel 
strangers. Racine is said to have remarked 
to his son that Corneille wrote verses a 
hundred times more beautiful than his own, 
but that he was the more popular of the 
two because he took some trouble to make 
himself personally agreeable. Sometimes 
Corneille’s friends would take him to task 
for not cultivating the graces of society, 
when he would reply, “Je suis toujours, 
Pierre Corneille,”—I am always Pierre 
Corneille. 

Following are quotations and criticisms: 


QUOTATIONS. 

A liar is always lavish of oaths. 

He who talks much says many foolish things. 

He who does not fear death cares naught for 
threats. 

He who is hated by all cannot expect to live 
long. 

He who allows himself to be insulted deserves 
to be so. 

Clemency is the surest proof of a true mon¬ 
arch. 


Corneille was the first dramatist who made 
the sentiment of admiration the basis of tragedy 
instead of terror or pity. 

Almost the first thing which strikes the reader 
is the singular inequality of this poet. Produc¬ 
ing, as he certainly has produced, work which 
classes him with the greatest names in literature, 
he has also signed an extraordinary quantity of 
verse which has not merely the defects of genius, 
irregularity, extravagance, but the faults which 
we are apt to regard as exclusively belonging 
to those who lack genius, to wit, the dullness 
and tediousness of mediocrity. . . . But his 

rank among the greatest of dramatic poets is not 
a matter of question. For a poet is to be judged 
by his best things, and the best things of Cor¬ 
neille are second to none.— Britannica. 

Corneille’s chief merit lies in his dignity of 
style, and in a certain declamatory grandeur of 
sentiment, which his countrymen have been ac¬ 
customed to consider truly epical, and which it 
is now impossible to convince them as nearly re¬ 
sembles rant as it does sublimity.— Chambers . 

Cornel. See Dogwood. 

Cornelia. See Gracchi. 

Cornell, Ezra (1807-1874), the 
founder of Cornell University. He was a 
mechanic of Ithaca, New York. In the 
early days of the telegraph, they laid the 
wires in a plow furrow. Cornell was the 
first to suggest stringing them on tele¬ 
graph poles. He made a fortune by con¬ 
structing and operating telegraph lines. He 
gave half a million dollars to erect the 
first buildings of the institution which 
bears his name, and enriched it with sub¬ 
sequent gifts and services. The autobiog¬ 
raphy of Andrew D. White, the first presi¬ 
dent of Cornell, gives an excellent account 
of the philanthropist’s methods and mo¬ 
tives. 

Cornell University, a celebrated in¬ 
stitution of higher learning at Ithaca, New 
York. It was founded in 1865. The 
United States gave nearly a million acres 
of wild lands “for the benefit of agricul- 



CORNET—CORONACH 


ture and the mechanic arts.” Ezra Cornell 
gave half a million dollars to found an 
institution where “any person can find in¬ 
struction on any subject.” The state has 
made appropriations for maintenance. 
Three of the regents are appointed by the 
governor. Liberal citizens have given 
lands, buildings, collections of books, an 
immense organ, etc. The total property 
is valued at about $11,000,000, with an 
annual income from all sources little short 
of a million. The grounds are much ad¬ 
mired. The doors are open to both sexes. 
Instruction is free to six hundred students 
of the state accredited from the various 
assembly districts. Others are charged tui¬ 
tion. Andrew D. White was the first pres¬ 
ident. Affairs have been managed with a 
sagacious liberality from the start. The 
various departments, especially those of a 
scientific or engineering character, rank 
high. There are about 3,000 students in 
attendance. Summer sessions are a strong 
feature. The institution is noteworthy as 
occupying an intermediate position between 
the endowed tuition college of New Eng¬ 
land and the free state university of the 
West. See White. 

Cornet, a wind instrument of brass or 
silver, somewhat resembling the bugle. 
The word cornet is French, a diminutive 
of the Latin word cornu, meaning a horn. 
The instrument consists of a curved tube, 
fitted with a bell-shaped mouth-piece, and 
provided with valves or pistons by which 
the pitch of the tone may be varied. It is 
used in brass bands to furnish soprano and 
contralto parts, and is a special favorite as 
a solo instrument in open air concerts, but 
its music is considered too harsh and pene¬ 
trating for regular orchestras. 

Cornwall, the most southwesterly dis¬ 
trict of England. The county is a narrow 
point of land with a total area of 1,357 
miles. The southwest extremity is known 
as “Land’s End.” Cornwall shares with 
other parts of England a reputation for 
cattle and sheep raising, and for market 
gardening. It is noted for ancient mines 
of copper and tin, some of which have 
been worked to a depth of 2,000 feet, ex¬ 
tending far out beneath the sea. The min¬ 
ers at work in their galleries can hear the 


surf beating above their heads. Pumps 
are required to keep the mines from be¬ 
coming flooded. These mines have been 
worked from time immemorial. They are 
diminishing in importance. The inhabit¬ 
ants, called Cornishmen, are descendants 
of the ancient Celts. They are akin to 
the Welsh, and to the inhabitants of Brit¬ 
tany. Until of late the Cornish dialect 
was the language of the people; but, 
through the influence of public schools, it 
has been replaced by English. Many have 
migrated to the mining districts of the 
United States. See Celt. 

Cornwallis, Charles (1738-1805), a 
British general. His father was an Eng¬ 
lish nobleman, to whose estates he succeed¬ 
ed in 1762, with the title of earl. Corn- 
wallis deserves to be held in greater 
respect than is accorded him by the aver¬ 
age American. Lie was well educated, and 
served his country honorably. In Parlia¬ 
ment he was a friend of America, and 
opposed the policy that led to war. So 
outspoken was he that when it became nec¬ 
essary to send his regiment to America, the 
king offered to give him leave of absence; 
that is, to excuse him from service; but 
Cornwallis preferred to lead his own sol¬ 
diers. He served under Howe and Clinton 
in the vicinity of New York. All must ad¬ 
mit that his campaigns in the Carolinas 
against Gates and Green were vigorous. 
His taking a position at Yorktown, and 
subsequent surrender, were due far more to 
conflicting orders from Clinton and lack 
of support than to any want of vigor or 
skill on his own part. After the close of 
the American war, Cornwallis served his 
king in India and sat in the privy council. 
He was buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral, 
where his memorial tablet may be seen in 
company with those of Admirals Rodney, 
Howe, and Nelson, and Generals Aber¬ 
crombie, Sir John Moore, and others who 
are deemed to have served their country 
well. See Yorktown. 

Coronach, kor'6-nak, a dirge, a lamen¬ 
tation, customary among the ancient Scotch 
and the Irish. It was sung usually by 
professionals, who recited the virtues and 
exploits of the dead. Scott’s Lady of the 
Lake gives a fine specimen of the coronach 


CORONADO—CORPORATION 


chanted to the sad music of the bagpipe 
over the remains of Duncan. 

Coronado, ko-ro-nah'dd, Francisco 
Vasquez de (1510P-1542?), a Spanish ex¬ 
plorer of New Mexico and provincial gov¬ 
ernor of Mexico. Great stories were afloat 
in his time of the “Seven Cities of Ci¬ 
bola” and their fabulous wealth, and in 
1540 Coronado set out from Culiacan to 
search for them with a company of 1,100 
soldiers and Indians. He found the sev¬ 
en pueblos of Cibola, but only as poor 
Indian villages; so he started eastward 
and explored what is now New Mexico, 
probably traversed parts of Texas, Colo¬ 
rado, Oklahoma, and on as far as north¬ 
eastern Kansas, when he gave up his vain 
hunt for gold and returned to Mexico, 
many of his followers having perished in 
the desert. His papers mention the agri¬ 
cultural possibilities of that country, and 
tell of herds of “humped cattle,” the first 
accurate description of the American buf¬ 
falo or bison. 

Coroner, a county officer whose business 
it is to inquire into the cause of a sudden 
or suspicious or accidental death. He has 
power to empanel a jury and examine wit¬ 
nesses. A coroner’s verdict to the effect 
that the deceased came to an end by foul 
play, or through the carelessness of an¬ 
other, lays the basis for criminal action by 
indictment, or for a damage suit to be 
brought by the relatives. The coroner is 
usually elected by ballot, the same as other 
county officials. 

Corot, ko-ro', Jean Baptiste Camille, 

fParis 1796-1875), a French landscape 
painter. He has high rank as a painter 
of landscapes, for which he made extraor¬ 
dinary preparation by a diligent study of 
nature. His paintings are marked for 
their sobriety of coloring. It is said that 
he was the first artist to reveal the possibil¬ 
ity of brown and gray. With these colors, 
aided by pale green, he painted a large 
number of scenes with exquisite dawn and 
twilight effects, including, Morning, Even¬ 
ing, Sunset, Rest, Solitude, Landscape with 
Figures, Pleasures of Evening, etc. The 
Boston Art Museum, the New York Metro¬ 
politan Museum, and other American gal¬ 
leries possess soecimens of Corot’s work. 


Corporation, an association or company 
authorized by law to act as though it were 
one person. A corporation possesses sev¬ 
eral advantages over a partnership, and is 
now the usual arrangement by which banks, 
railroads, manufactures, and commercial 
enterprises are managed. A corporation 
must have a name and must operate under 
so-called articles, setting forth the kind 
of business proposed, the manner in which 
it is to be conducted, and the amount of 
money, that is to say, capital stock, to be 
invested. The capital stock is sold to mem¬ 
bers who thus become shareholders. The 
management of a corporation is intrusted 
usually to a board of directors elected an¬ 
nually by ballot, each shareholder being 
entitled to as many votes as he holds shares 
of stock. The directors are empowered 
usually to appoint a president, vice-presi¬ 
dent, a secretary, and a treasurer from 
their own number; to fix salaries; and to 
employ, if necessary, a manager for the 
business. 

Beyond taking part in the annual elec¬ 
tion of directors the stockholders cannot 
control the management of the business. 
This is one of the great advantages of a 
corporation. In a partnership, a partner 
who becomes dissatisfied can call for a 
division and interrupt seriously an enter¬ 
prise in hand; but a dissatisfied shareholder 
cannot interfere with the management of a 
corporation. He may sell his stock, or 
labor for a change of management; but 
cannot step in and interfere with what the 
manager is doing. It would be very awk¬ 
ward, for instance, if seventy-five people 
owning a railroad in partnership were to 
become dissatisfied and demand a division 
of the property, one taking a locomotive, 
another half a dozen freight cars, a third, 
two passenger CQaches, and others again 
different sections of the railway, depots, 
stations, etc. 

Another advantage of the corporation is 
that it permits many people to invest their 
money in the same business, and yet keeps 
the management in the hands of a few. It 
is pretty difficult for half a dozen partners 
to agree as to the details of a business; yet 
several thousand shareholders in a corpora¬ 
tion find no difficulty in managing a busi- 


CORPULENCE 


ness efficiently through a simple method 
of electing officials from whose decision 
there is no appeal. The large amount of 
capital required to carry on such an enter¬ 
prise as a transcontinental railway, for in¬ 
stance, is beyond the means of a single in¬ 
dividual ; and even if brought together it 
could not be held together by any form of 
partnership. Incorporation seems to be the 
only practical method of carrying out a 
large enterprise. 

In the eye of the law a corporation is a 
single individual. It can sue and be sued. 
It can sell, buy, and hold property. Stock¬ 
holders may die, but the corporation lives. 
Stockholders may change, but the corpora¬ 
tion is the same. It possesses a certain in¬ 
dividuality or personality of its own, 
independent of its shareholders. A share¬ 
holder cannot be sued for the debts of the 
corporation, nor be held liable for its acts. 
A corporation may steal timber; its officials 
may, indeed, be punished, as officials; but 
the shareholders are not personally answer- 
able to the law. The property of the cor¬ 
poration may be taken to pay for trespass 
or other damage, but the shareholder’s pri¬ 
vate property may not. One’s share in a 
corporation may be seized and sold for 
debt, just as his horse or farm may be 
taken; but a corporation cannot be made to 
pay the debts of a shareholder. The share¬ 
holder and the corporation are two en¬ 
tirely distinct individuals. Profits may be 
divided among shareholders according to 
the number of shares held by each. Such 
payments are called dividends. By gen¬ 
eral agreement a loss may be made up by 
an assessment; but ordinarily a corporation 
has no authority to call upon stockholders 
to make losses good, any more than a man 
has a right to call on his neighbors to make 
up his losses. 

The exemption of stockholders from re¬ 
sponsibility for corporation debts is sub¬ 
ject to two exceptions. In case the origi¬ 
nal stockholder has purchased his stock for 
less than par value, he may be required, in 
case of need, to pay into the treasury the 
rest of the sum represented by his stock. 
This is a principle of common law de¬ 
signed to protect creditors who had reason 
to suppose the corporation had received the 


face value for stock sold. Some states 
make stockholders liable for debts twice or 
three times the amount of stock held. 

There are disadvantages connected with 
corporations. It is hard to right a wrong 
done by a company of this sort. The 
stockholders, who may have instigated un¬ 
lawful acts, hide behind a board of di¬ 
rectors, and it is difficult to hold them 
responsible. Large shareholders not in¬ 
frequently elect themselves to official posi¬ 
tions in which they draw large salaries or 
otherwise manipulate the business in such 
a way that the interests of the smaller 
shareholders are neglected. Dividends may 
be deferred until the small holders are 
forced to sell their shares at a ruinous 
price. 

The laws of New Jersey are particu¬ 
larly favorable to the incorporation of the 
large companies known as trusts. The fees 
of the state from that source are very large, 
amounting to $3,500,000 for the year 1904. 
In 1909 Congress imposed an income tax 
on corporations designed to produce a reve¬ 
nue and to give the general government an 
opportunity to know more of the business 
done by corporations. See Trust. 

Corpulence, portliness, bulkiness of 
body. Stoutness may be regarded either 
as a disease or as excessively good health. 
It is usually accompanied, if not caused, by 
a good appetite, an excellent digestion, 
tranquillity of mind, and indisposition to 
physical exertion. It is not, however, in¬ 
dicative of a sluggish mind. Dr. Samuel 
Johnson may be mentioned as a corpulent 
man with a vigorous mind. Stoutness is 
an enlargement of the soft organs of the 
body, and an overloading with fat. The 
muscles and bones do not increase in 
weight. The cure for ordinary corpulence 
is exercise, or labor to the point of per¬ 
spiration, and the avoidance of fat-build¬ 
ing foods, such as sweets, fats, wines, po¬ 
tatoes, and rice. Lean meat, game, eggs, 
fish, green vegetables, especially cabbage 
and asparagus, and brown bread are rec¬ 
ommended. Vinegar is an antifat food 
article. Many mineral waters have the 
effect of reducing weight. Bismarck was 
helped greatly by the use of Kissingen 
spring water. 


CORPUSCLE—CORSAIRS 


Corpulence is due frequently to inherited 
tendencies in which case a fleshy person 
may be, and often is, a light eater. Not 
infrequently corpulence comes on a strong, 
healthy person as the result of high living 
and inactivity. Excessive corpulence is 
due sometimes to a diseased condition of the 
body which may or may not yield to medi¬ 
cal treatment. An instance of the latter 
case is that of Daniel Lambert of Leices¬ 
ter, England, who died in 1809 in his 
fortieth year. Lambert ate moderately, 
drank water bnly, and slept less than an 
ordinary person; yet weighed 739 pounds. 
His waistcoat, still preserved, is so large 
that it may be buttoned around seven or¬ 
dinary men. Lambert is supposed to have 
been the heaviest man that ever lived. He 
was only five feet eleven inches in height. 
Other cases are recorded in English jour¬ 
nals. A grocer died in 1750, at the age of 
29, whose weight was 616 pounds. An¬ 
other young man, dying at 22, weighed 
643 pounds. A girl of 4 is mentioned in 
scientific papers in 1813 as weighing 256 
pounds. 

It is stated on good authority that well 
proportioned men of middle age whose 
height is 5 feet 6 inches; 5 feet 9 inches; 
and 6 feet; should weigh about 150, 165, 
and 180 pounds, respectively. A woman 
5 feet 2 inches in height should weigh 
about 125 pounds. 

Corpuscle. See Blood. 

Corregio, kor-red'jo (1494-1534), an 
Italian painter. He is noted for graceful 
figures and his handling of perspective. 
His pictures are highly prized in the gal¬ 
leries of Europe. His subjects are simi¬ 
lar to those of Michelangelo and 
Raphael, with whom he is, in a way, asso¬ 
ciated and ranked; but he could be spared 
with far less disaster to art. Holy Night , 
his most celebrated painting, hangs in the 
Dresden Gallery. Artists consider it a 
masterpiece of light and shade. There are 
six of Corregio’s paintings in this gallery. 
They cost Augustus $90,000. Others are 
to be found at London, Paris, Naples, 
Florence, and Rome; but most of Cor¬ 
regio’s work was done by way of interior 
decoration for the churches of Parma.. In 
the main dome of the Parma Cathedral, he 


painted the Assumption of the Virgin. 
Mary, the mother, is borne aloft by a host 
of rejoicing angels, while Christ, the Son, 
hastens to meet her. Corregio was the 
son of a Modena merchant. He lived 
chiefly in Mantua and Parma. He died 
without having visited Rome, Florence, or 
any of the renowned art centers. 

Correlation. See Memory. 
Correspondence Schools. See Schools. 
Corrosive Sublimate, the bichloride of 
mercury, called “corrosive” because of its 
vigorous action on the body tissues, and 
“sublimate” because produced by sublima¬ 
tion. It is a heavy, white, crystalline sub¬ 
stance, moderately soluble, and with an 
acrid taste. It is a virulent poison. The 
white of eggs is useful in counteracting its 
effects when taken into the stomach, but 
an emetic or the stomach-pump had better 
be used. It is a powerful antiseptic, and 
under the name “bichloride” is used in the 
bath after a contagious disease. It is to 
be carefully distinguished from the other 
chloride of mercury known as calomel. See 
.Mercury; Calomel; Poison. 

Corsairs, pirates of the Barbary coast. 

From the days when Barbarossa defied the 
whole strength of the Emperor Charles V, to the 
early part of the present century, when prizes 
were taken by Algerine rovers under the guns, 
so to say, of all the fleets of Europe, the Corsairs 
were masters of the narrow seas, and dictated 
their own terms to all comers. Nothing but the 
creation of the large standing navies of the pres¬ 
ent age crippled them; nothing less than the 
conquest of their too convenient coasts could 
have thoroughly suppressed them. During these 
three centuries they levied blackmail upon all who 
had any trading interests in the Mediterranean. 
The Venetians, Genoese, Pisans in older days, 
the English, French, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, 
and American Governments in modern times, 
purchased security by the payment of a regular 
tribute, or by the periodical presentation of costly 
gifts. The penalty of resistance was too well 
known to need exemplification. Thousands of 
Christian slaves in the bagnios at Algiers bore 
witness, to the consequences of an independent 
policy. So long as the nations of Europe con¬ 
tinued to quarrel among themselves, instead of 
presenting a united line of battle to the enemy, 
such humiliations had to be endured; so long as 
a Corsair raid upon Spain suited the policy of 
France; so long as the Dutch, in their jealousy 
of other states, could declare that Algiers was 
necessary to them, there was no chance of the 
plague subsiding; and it was not till the close 
of the great Napoleonic wars that the Powers 


CORSET—CORTES 


agreed, at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle in 
1818, to act together, and do away with the 
scourge of Christendom. And even then little 
was accomplished till France combined territorial 
aggrandizement with the role of a civilizing in¬ 
fluence.—Poole, Story of the Barbary Corsairs. 

Corset, a close-fitting underwaist made 
of stout cotton, linen, or silk, and stiffened 
with narrow bands of steel, whalebone, 
. or similar substance. It is worn by women 
to insure well fitting gowns, and to sup¬ 
port the skirts. The origin of the cor¬ 
set is unknown, but it is certain that the 
garment was worn in Cleopatra’s time. 
For many centuries, the corset was little 
more than a bandage wound about the 
body. In the fourteenth century a corset 
was introduced which adapted itself to the 
figure. It was not worn, however, as an 
undergarment, but outside the other cloth¬ 
ing. It was laced across the front, the 
edges being far enough apart to show an 
embroidered waist beneath. This garment 
was very popular, and in France was 
worn by both men and women. A hun¬ 
dred years later, a wooden corset made 
in two parts was worn for a time. Toward 
the close of the sixteenth century a cor¬ 
set made of thin metal slats in the form 
of lattice work was invented. 

During the reign of Catherine de Medi¬ 
ci of France lacing became fashionable. 
Catherine de Medici was vain and foolish. 
She prescribed thirteen inches as the prop¬ 
er measure for a woman’s waist, and in¬ 
troduced a corset in the form of a steel 
cage or vise, which proved efficacious not 
only in compressing the waist, but in hold¬ 
ing the body absolutely rigid after it was 
compressed. Queen Elizabeth’s court was 
ever ready to ape the French; and men 
and women of both countries tortured 
themselves with these garments, in spite 
of a rapidly increasing death rate. Not 
until Henry IV of France issued an im¬ 
perial order forbidding the use of these 
corsets was the injurious fashion stamped 
out. Many women evaded the law by 
having their dresses made with steels in 
the sides, and on the death of Henry IV 
corsets again became common among all 
classes. Early in the eighteenth century, 
the whalebone corset was introduced, and 
after that improvements were rapid. 


At the present day there are more large 
corset factories in the United States than 
in any country in the world. The manu¬ 
facture is interesting. The corsets are de¬ 
signed, cut, and fitted by men. The stitch¬ 
ing is done by girls and women. The 
sewing machines are marvels of ingenuity. 
Some of them work with ten needles, often 
making from 1,600 to 1,800 stitches a 
minute. The corset is boned by hand. It 
is then trimmed, washed, starched, ironed, 
and shaped over heated blocks or forms. 
The best corset of today is not the rigid 
steel cage of Catherine de Medici’s time. 
It is light and pliable, constructed with 
due regard to the different positions or¬ 
dinarily taken during a day’s work and 
recreation. It permits deep breathing, and 
in many instances is specially designed to 
enable the wearer to engage in the athletic 
sports so fashionable as well as healthful. 
The corset should not be a support for 
the body, but for the clothing, and if 
properly made and fitted is an easy and 
comfortable garment. 

Corsica, a large island of the Medi¬ 
terranean. It lies immediately north of 
Sardinia, 100 miles south of Genoa. 
Length, 116 miles; extreme width, 52 
miles. The highest peak reaches an eleva¬ 
tion of 8,889 feet. There are mines of 
lead and copper, plantations of olive, al¬ 
mond, and fig trees. Vineyards are nu¬ 
merous. The people are of Italian blood, 
language, and aspect. The island has be¬ 
longed at various times to the Phoenicians, 
Carthaginians, Romans, Saracens, Pisans, 
and Genoese. It now belongs to France. 
Education is backward. Half of the peo¬ 
ple are unable to read and write. Local 
feuds are still bitter. The island is noted 
as the birthplace of Napoleon Bonaparte. 
See Sardinia; Napoleon Bonaparte. 

Cortes, kor'tes, the parliament or rep¬ 
resentative assembly—the congress—of 
Spain or of Portugal. The Cortes of 
Spain is an ancient body which has un¬ 
dergone many changes. Under the con¬ 
stitution, proclaimed in 1876, the present 
cortes consists of two independent houses— 
the Senate and the Congress. The Senate 
is composed of wealthy men in their own 
right—of 100 members appointed for life 


CORTEZ—COSTA RICA 


by the crown and 180 elected members. 
The Congress includes one member for 
each 50,000 people. A measure must pass 
both houses before it can become a law. 
See Congress; Spain. 

Cortez, kor'tez, Hernando (1485- 
1547), the Spanish conqueror of Mexico. 
He was a boy of eight when Columbus re¬ 
turned with his cargo of wonderful birds, 
animals, and products of the New World. 
At the age of nineteen we hear of him in 
the West Indies. At thirty-three he set 
out from Santiago, Cuba, for an explora¬ 
tion of Mexico. His force consisted of 
about 700 Spanish soldiers, 18 horses, and 
10 small field guns. He landed at Vera 
Cruz, built a small fort, and burned his 
eleven small ships that his troops might 
have no occasion to think of them as a 
plac£ of refuge. The details of the in¬ 
vasion are admirably told in Prescott’s 
Conquest of Mexico. It is sufficient to 
say that his floating ships, his thunder¬ 
dealing guns, and horses with riders caused 
the unsuspecting natives to regard the 
Spaniards as messengers of the gods. The 
invaders were received with every honor 
and were loaded with hospitality. Cortez 
was no sooner in position to do so than 
he stirred up sedition, imprisoned the un- 
happy Montezuma, and delivered him to 
a cruel death. He made himself master 
of the country by a series of crimes for 
which even the lust of conquest and the 
need of securing the safety of his small 
army furnishes no shadow of excuse. It 
is a pleasure to know that jealousy of his 
fame and a desire on the part of others 
to share the gold of Mexico led to the 
curtailing of his authority and his final 
recall. The man who was able to boast 
to Charles V, “I am a man who has gained 
you more provinces than your father left 
you towns,” was spurned actually from 
the presence of his sovereign. He died 
in Spain an embittered, neglected man. 
See Aztecs. 

Corundum, a well known mineral. It 
is a compound of aluminum and oxygen. 
It is hard, ranking next to the diamond. 
There are three recognized types of corun¬ 
dum. The first is the gem called the sap¬ 
phire. Five varieties are known. A second 


type is corundum proper. It differs from 
the gems only in lack of bright color. It is 
used as a polishing material. The third 
form is called emery, which is merely an 
impure corundum. There is an important 
corundum deposit north of Kingston, On¬ 
tario. Supplies are obtained also from 
New Jersey, Massachusetts, and the Caro- 
linas. See Sapphire; Emery; Grind¬ 
stone. 

Corydon, kor'i-don, a shepherd in one 
of the idyls of Theocritus, and in one of 
Virgil’s eclogues. Hence the name is used 
in pastoral poetry and elsewhere to desig¬ 
nate a shepherd or rustic. Spenser gives 
the name to a shepherd in the Faerie 
Queene and again in Colin Clout . Scott 
gives it to a shoemaker in Count Robert 
of Paris. 

Cossacks, tribes inhabiting the southern 
and southeastern borders of Russia. Their 
origin is not understood. They seem of 
mixed blood, both Tartar and Russian. 
Some are settled as fishermen and graziers; 
but the typical Cossack leads a wild, free 
life on the steppes, not unlike that of the 
nomad Arabs. Their wealth consists in 
tents, horses, and cattle. They are per¬ 
mitted by the Russians to maintain a large 
degree of independence under chiefs chos¬ 
en by themselves. Military service is the 
chief requirement made of them. Each 
Cossack furnishes his own horse—a tough, 
wiry, shaggy pony. The Cossacks form 
a body of light cavalry valuable for scout¬ 
ing and sudden onsets. They are audacious 
and skillful, and are seldom caught nap¬ 
ping. They are devout members of the 
Greek Church, and are loyal to the czar. 
The authorities make frequent use of Cos¬ 
sacks to suppress insurrections. They 
have a fine contempt for agricultural peas¬ 
ants and workmen. They seem to have no 
sympathy with discontent or revolution. 
The number of Cossacks is placed by Rus¬ 
sian authority at 3,000,000. See Russia. 

Cost of Living. See Wages. 

Costa Rica, kos'ta re'ka, the most 
southerly republic of Central America. It 
extends from the Caribbean Sea to the Pa¬ 
cific Ocean, and from Panama to Nica¬ 
ragua. The tenth parallel of north latitude 
passes very nearly through the geographi- 


COTOPAXI—COTTON 


cal center. Area, 22,000 square miles. The 
coasts are fringed with tropical forests ex¬ 
tending inland to an altitude of 3,000 feet. 
Oaks and chaparral come next. The vege¬ 
tation of the mountain tops resembles that 
of the Andes. The highest peaks are vol¬ 
canic. Eruptions have occurred no later 
than 1866. The wild animals are those of 
similar regions in South America—the ar¬ 
madillo, tapir, puma, deer, and numerous 
monkeys. 

The people, about 400,000, are almost 
entirely of Spanish descent, with a few 
Indians and negroes. The little republic 
has a reputation for better schools and less 
illiteracy than any other country colonized 
by the Spanish. It threw off the Spanish 
rule in 1821, and has been independent 
since 1830. 

San Jose, in the interior, is the capital. 
The government is modeled on that of 
the United States, though the Congress 
consists of one house. Gold, iron, copper, 
silver, petroleum, and coal are found in the 
mountains. Limon, the Caribbean port, 
is connected with the interior cities by 
several railways. 

In 1912, 10,600,000 bunches of bananas 
were shipped to Galveston, New Orleans, 
Mobile, and English ports, as well as 
$3,000,000 worth of excellent coffee. The 
merchants of the United States and Eng¬ 
land sell large amounts of cloth, clothing, 
drugs, tools, and machinery for the mines 
and plantations. Paints, oils, flour, wheat, 
and lard are imported. 

The alert reader should keep Costa Rica 
in mind as a self-respecting, proud, little 
country, putting forth a determined effort 
to be intelligent and thrifty. 

Cotopaxi, k5-t5-paks'e, the most re¬ 
markable volcano of South America. It is 
situated in Ecuador, but a few miles south 
of the equator. Its upper portion is 
shrouded in perpetual snow. It presents 
a perfectly conical outline. Seen from the 
Pacific it is a magnificent peak, 19,550 
feet high. Steam is issuing from the crater 
at all times. Since 1698 a number of 
tremendous eruptions have taken place, the 
latest in 1885. It is said that in 1744 
thunder-like explosions and rumblings 
were heard 600 miles away. 


Cotter’s Saturday Night, The, a poem 

by Robert Burns, published in 1786. This is 
one of the best and most famous of Burns’ 
longer poems. It describes the home of 
a Scottish peasant on Saturday, when the 
father from the field and the children from 
service “amang the farmers roun” gather 
in the humble cottage rejoicing that the 
week’s work is over. The brothers and 
sisters visit together, “each tells the uncos 
that he sees or hears.’’' They give a portion 
of their earnings to the mother and listen 
to their father’s counsels. A guest arrives 
and is welcomed, the simple supper is eat¬ 
en, and all gather “round the ingle” for 
family worship. Then they separate, the 
older children to return to work, the little 
ones to bed, and father and mother are left 
alone. See Burns. 

Belyve, the elder bairns come drapping in, 

At service out, amang the farmers roun’: 

Some ca’ the pleugh, some herd, some tentie rin 
A cannie errand to a neebor town ! 

Their eldest hope, their Jennie, woman grown. 

In youthfu’ bloom, love sparkling in her e’e. 
Comes hame, perhaps, to show a braw new gown, 
Or deposit her sair-won penny-fee, 

To help her parents dear, if they in hardship be. 

Wi’ joy unfeign’d brothers and sisters meet, 

An’ each for other’s welfare kindly spiers? 
The social hours, swift-winged, unnoticed fleet; 

Each tells the uncos that he sees or hears; 

The parents, partial, eye their hopeful years, 
Anticipation forward points the view; 

The mother, wi’ her needle an’ her shears. 

Gars auld claes look amaist as weel’s the new; 
The father mixes a’ wi’ admonition due. 

VOCABULARY. 

belyve, by and by spiers, inquires 

tentie, heedful, cautious uncos, news 
bravo, fine, handsome gars, makes 

sair, sadly, sorely claes, clothes 

Cottolene. See Cotton. 

Cotton, the fiber which surrounds the 
seed of several species of the cotton plant. 
Cotton grows on a bushy herb two or three 
feet high. It is contained in a three- to 
five-celled pod which bursts open when 
ripe. The open pod is called a boll. The 
cotton fiber is intended by nature to en¬ 
able the wind to carry and scatter the 
seeds as it does those of the milkweed, 
cottonwood, and dandelion; but man has 
discovered that the soft fiber may be 
twisted into thread, and the thread woven 
into cloth. Cotton is the great cloth plant 


COTTON 


of the world. The crowded population of 
Japan, China, India, Egypt, and the in¬ 
habitants of all warm countries—half to 
four-fifths of the human race—wear cot¬ 
ton clothes the year round. The peasants 
of the countries named never wear any¬ 
thing else. The use of clothing, and 
particularly of cotton clothing, is increas¬ 
ing rapidly. There is little danger, there¬ 
fore, of raising too much cotton. If the 
entire world were civilized and able to 
dress properly, the cotton looms would re¬ 
quire 42,000,000 bales a year. 

Cotton cloth appears to have been made 
and worn before the dawn of history in 
three centers,—India, Northern Africa, 
and Central America. Columbus found 
Indians wearing cotton cloth, and Cortez 
found the Mexican Indians proficient in 
weaving a native cloth. Europe got its 
first cotton cloth from India, by way of 
the caravan trade. Calico is the Calicut 
cloth of India; muslin, the Moosoul cloth 
of Mesopotamia; cambric is the cloth of 
Cambrai, a town in France where it was 
first made from cotton brought from In¬ 
dia. Europe appears to have taken an 
interest in cotton weaving shortly after the 
discovery of America. At first people, ac¬ 
customed to linen and woolen goods, 
thought cotton good enough for a royal 
wedding dress. 

Cotton was known in our southern colo¬ 
nies from the earliest times, but merely as 
a dooryard plant—an ornamental flowering 
herb. In 1739 a bag of cotton was sent 
to England from Savannah. In 1784, at 
the close of the Revolutionary War, eight 
bags of American cotton were seized at 
Liverpool on a suspicion that the colonies 
could not have produced so much. About 
this date cotton growing began in the 
United States in earnest, and ten years 
later Charleston had 1,000,000 pounds to 
sell. The industry went on slowly at first, 
because the cotton had to be pulled from 
the seed by hand. In 1793 an inventive 
Massachusetts Yankee, by the name of 
Eli Whitney, resident in Georgia, devised 
a cotton gin. It consists of a hopper into 
which the bolls are poured. One side 
of the hopper is composed of parallel 

wires, between which circular saws, fixed 
11-19 


on a swiftly revolving roller, turn with 
rapidity and whip the fiber through 
the slits, while the seeds, too large to 
follow, rattle down to the bottom of the 
hopper and out into a pile by themselves. 
This device, which, by the way, brought 
Mr. Whitney no end of lawsuits and 
little profit, enabled planters to prepare 
large quantities of cotton for market. In 
1791 we sold England 189,000 pounds; in 
1803 we sold her 41,000,000 pounds; in 
1810 our exports were 94,000,000 pounds; 
in 1820 we sold 128,000,000 pounds; in 
1830 we had 271,000,000 pounds to spare, 
and so on up to 1860, when the American 
production of cotton had reached the aston¬ 
ishing figure of 1,462,500,000 pounds or 
4,685,000 bales of 300 pounds each. The 
cotton crop began to bring in so much mon¬ 
ey that Senator Hammond declared on the 
floor of the Senate, 1858, “Cotton is king.” 

In 1790 the first successful American 
cotton mill—a factory for spinning and 
weaving cotton—was established in Paw¬ 
tucket, Rhode Island. English invention 
(see articles on Hargreaves and Ark¬ 
wright) had built up a great cotton¬ 
weaving industry in that country. Ameri¬ 
ca had but to import English machinery 
and begin work. Four years later a second 
mill was erected. By 1810 there were 102 
mills and 31,000 spindles; twenty years 
later, there were 795 mills with 1,250,000 
spindles, or 33,000 looms. When the Civil 
War came we had 1,000 mills, employing 
100,000 people, and consuming 420,000,- 
000 pounds of cotton a year. 

The fertility of the soil, cheap slave la¬ 
bor, and the use of the cotton gin, en¬ 
abled America to raise most of the cotton 
needed in the world’s markets. Our At¬ 
lantic States, from Virginia southward, all 
the Gulf States, and Tennessee, engaged in 
raising cotton. During the Civil War it 
was difficult for Northern mills to get cot¬ 
ton. Prices rose till calico sold for twenty- 
five cents per yard. On account of the 
blockade, or guarding of the Southern 
ports by Federal ships, England could 
scarcely get shipments at all; and the 
so-called Cotton Famine in Great Britain 
followed. Other countries were not pre¬ 
pared to raise large amounts, and many 


COTTON 


English mills were obliged to close, throw¬ 
ing thousands and thousands of people out 
of work and causing great financial disas¬ 
ters. The high price of cotton, in time, 
stimulated greater production, particularly 
in Egypt and India. When the Civil War 
was over the cotton plantations of the 
South, with buildings burned, negroes gone, 
and foreign markets occupied by new 
growers, were simply ruined. 

Of late the natural superiority of Ameri¬ 
can cotton, the establishment of cotton 
mills near the cotton fields, and a system 
of cultivation by small renters rather than 
on the now impossible large plantations, 
have given American cotton and American 
cloth a new ascendency. The United 
States now produces more cotton than ever. 
Our Southern states grow 13,500,000 bales 
a year, or eighty per cent of the world’s 
cotton. The American cotton crop for 
1913 was valued at $798,000,000. Eu¬ 
rope now pays the United States $1,000,- 
000 a day for cotton. 

Cotton culture is not unlike that of corn 
or potatoes. Fields are plowed and ferti¬ 
lized and the seed is dropped in hills. 
Warm, steamy weather helps the young 
crop on rapidly. The planting begins fre¬ 
quently in February. It continues for 
about two months. During May and June 
the plants are cultivated. This work is 
done with a big, long-handled hoe, and 
is called “chopping cotton.” The weeds 
are “chopped” out, and the rows thinned 
by cutting out the poorer plants. Then, 
for two months or more, there is no work 
in the cotton fields. In many cotton-grow¬ 
ing regions in the South, this is the one 
time in the year when the children can be 
spared to attend school. Cotton raising 
need not impoverish the soil. The cotton 
fiber itself draws its elements from air and 
water. In selling a bale of cotton, a 
planter sells no part of his soil. If the 
stalks be returned to the soil and the 
cotton seed be fed to stock, a cotton farm 
should not run down. 

During the latter part of September 
cotton picking begins. The bolls open 
gradually, and, as the cotton is picked 
from the open bolls only, the picking lasts 
a long time. The first light frosts hasten 


the opening of the bolls, and the bulk of 
the cotton is picked usually in October 
and November. The cotton is seldom all 
picked by Christmas time, and fields are 
seen as late as March still white with 
cotton. Usually a thrifty cotton grower 
gets his cotton picked before time to plant 
the next crop; but there is sufficient rea¬ 
son for the expression, “It takes thirteen 
months to raise a cotton crop.” A good 
field hand can pick 200 pounds a day. A 
cotton picking machine has been intro¬ 
duced. It runs astride of a row. Two 
cylinders catch the cotton. In place of 
the grain elevators seen farther north, the 
railroad stations of the cotton-growing 
states are provided with cotton gins and 
cotton-baling machines. After /ginning, 
cotton is compressed by machinery and 
bound by strap iron into bales weighing 
about 500 pounds. It is then ready for 
market. The cotton gin turns out about 
tw r o-thirds seed and one-third fiber by 
weight. A bale of cotton and half a ton 
of cottonseed may be regarded as a fair 
yield per acre. 

The seed, not unlike green coffee in ap¬ 
pearance, was formerly thrown away as 
waste, but is now put through a heavy 
press. It yields a large amount of cotton¬ 
seed oil, and a refuse known as oil cake. 
Oil cake is fed to stock. Cottonseed oil 
is used for a great variety of purposes. 
It is the oil out of which cottolene, a 
substitute for lard, is made. About 6,100,- 
000 tons of seed, formerly left to rot be¬ 
hind the gins, is now utilized. 

Cotton fiber is ordinarily from one-half 
to two-thirds of an inch in length. A 
fiber is merely a hollow, flat, cellulose tube, 
with a spiral twist. An especially fine, 
soft cotton, called Sea Island cotton is 
produced on the islands off the coast of 
Georgia. The boll is small; the seeds are 
black. It has a fiber two inches long. 
This cotton cannot so far be made to grow 
with entire success on the mainland, or in 
other parts of the world. It commands 
a high price. It is said that a thousand 
mile thread has been spun from it so fine 
that it weighed but a pound. 

Cotton raising is not without its difficul¬ 
ties. Insect pests are hard to overcome. 



Cor TON 


L.L.SlaJd*. ti 


Copyright 1912, Welles Bros. Pub. Co. 







Km 


A mj 




yr f \ jBn 












* «•<*■* r - f » • f 



A 


, t 



1. Seed 

2. Planting 

3. Cultivating 


4. Flower 7. 

5. Bolls 8. 

6. Plant 0. 


Handpicking 
Machine pickin 
Cotton Press 


COTTON 

10. Weighing 

11. Gin 

12. Shipping 


13. Spinning 16. Carpets 

14. Weaving 17. Cloth 

15. Batting, etc. 18. Seed Products 


















- » 






















































COTTON 


There are three serious insect pests, the 
cotton-stainer, the cotton-worm, and the 
cotton boll-weevil. The cotton-stainer is 
the least annoying. It is a species of in¬ 
sect in some degree like a chinch-bug, but 
longer. The body of the adult is red, with 
pale brown wing covers, marked with yel¬ 
lowish stripes. The young have black legs 
and red bodies. They feed by sucking the 
juice of the stems and buds of the cotton 
plant, and are especially dreaded because 
they stain the cotton in the opening bolls. 
They are also accused of puncturing the 
rinds of oranges so that the fruit soon 
decays. 

The cotton-worm is the caterpillar of 
a small, night-flying moth. The moth lives 
over winter in the shelter of old grass. It 
lays its eggs in early springtime on the 
cotton plant when it is only an inch or 
two high. The caterpillars are hairy, 
green fellows, with black dots. They travel 
with a looping gait, like the cutworm and 
the measuring worm. The first generation 
hatches out in March. As soon as the 
caterpillar has matured and turned into 
a moth, the second generation travels 
northward and lays eggs. The Texas cot¬ 
ton worm moth is thought in this way to 
give rise to seven successive generations 
in the same growing season. The cater¬ 
pillars strip the plants of their leaves and 
render a crop out of the question. 

The cotton boll-weevil is a small, gray- 
reddish-brown, snout beetle about a quar¬ 
ter of an inch in length. It has a long, 
strong beak. It feeds on the cotton plant 
and nothing else. The adult female punc¬ 
tures the young cotton boll and deposits 
an egg. The egg hatches into a grub, 
which works inside the boll until it is 
ready to come out. It leaves a hole behind 
it through which moisture enters and utter¬ 
ly ruins the cotton. The cotton boll- 
weevil entered Texas from Mexico. It 
has been traveling northeastward at the 
rate of about seventy miles a year. The 
state of Texas offers a standing reward of 
$50,000 for a practical solution of the 
problem presented by this pest. 

Statistics. The American cotton crop 
for 1911 was reported by the Census 
Bureau at 12,132,332 bales of 500 pounds 


each. The crop by states in running bales 
was as follows: 


Alabama. 

Arkansas . 

Florida . 

Georgia . 

Louisiana. 

Mississippi .... 

Missouri. 

North Carolina 
Oklahoma 
South Carolina 

Tennessee. 

Virginia. 

All others ..... 


Bales. 

1,230,000 

838,000 

68,000 

1,881,000 

274,000 

1,271,000 

48,000 

777,000 

900,000 

1,244,000 

3,135,000 

13,000 

113,000 


The following statistics are taken from 
Bureau of the Census Bulletin, Supply 
and Distribution of Cotton, for the year 
ending August 31, 1909. The ruling 

weight of a bale is 500 pounds. 

Consumption, 1909. 


United States: Spindles. 

Cotton growing states. 10,429,000 

All other states. 17,589,000 

Europe : 

United Kingdom .... 53,312,000 

Germany . 10,163,000 

Russia . 8,076,000 

France . 7,000,000 

Italy . 5,000,000 

Austria-Hungary .... 4,352,000 

Spain . 1,900,000 

Switzerland . 1,497,000 

Belgium . 1,231,000 

Portugal . 451,000 

Netherlands . 425,000 

Sweden . 450,000 

Denmark . 78,000 

Norway . 76,000 

Other European countries 220,000 

British India . 5,800,000 

Japan . 1,732,000 

China ,. 800,000 

Brazil . 1,000,000 

Mexico . 750,000 

Canada. 831.000 

Other countries . 215,000 


Bales. 

2,476,000 

2,723,000 

3,5-12,000 

1,765,000 

1,514,000 

970,000 

941,000 

795,000 

327,000 

110,000 

210,000 

62,000 

85,000 

85,000 

23,000 

11,000 

75,000 

1,661,000 

910,000 

400,000 

375,000 

185,000 

"•*7.000 

53 ,; 


Total .133,377,000 19,397,000 

The corresponding totals for the year 
1900 were: 

Spindles . 105,661,232 

Bales . 15,185,165 

The leading states in the spinning of 
cotton in 1908 are: 

Massachusetts . 9,415,000 1,155,000 

North Carolina . 2,861,000 609,000 

South Carolina . 3,617,000 591,000 











































COTTON 



Spindles. 

Bales. 

Georgia . 

1,757,000 

458,000 

New Hampshire . 

1,318,000 

247,000 

Rhode Island . 

2,279,000 

218,000 

Alabama . 

934,000 

202,000 

New York . 

910,000 

172,000 

Maine . 

978,000 

153,000 

Supply. The nearly 

19,000,000 

bales 


consumed by the cotton mills of the world 
were supplied by the following countries: 

Per cent. 


United States. 65.9 

British India . .. 14.8 

Egypt . 7.8 

Russia. 3.8 

China . 2.6 

Brazil . 2.2 

All other countries . 2.9 


American cotton is exported from almost 
every station from which railways leave for 
Canada. Thus Minnesota and North Da¬ 
kota appear in the list of cotton exporting 
states. The chief ports of cotton export 
in one year were: 


Bales. 

Galveston, Tex. 2,301,000 

New Orleans, La. 1,870,000 

Savannah, Ga. 892,000 

New York, N. Y. 619,000 

Wilmington, N. C. ... 492,000 

Mobile, Ala. 259,000 

Brunswick, Ga. 176,000 

Pensacola, Fla. 173,000 

Boston and Charlestown, Mass. 156,000 

Baltimore, Md. 117,000 

Sabine, Tex. 108,000 

Puget Sound, Wash. 101,000 


The countries to which cotton is sent, 
and the number of bales exported to each 
in a recent year are as follows: 


Bales. 

United Kingdom . 2,956,000 

Germany . 2,385,000 

France . 889,000 

Italy . 418,000 

Spain . 262,000 

Belgium . 119,000 

Russia .,. 98,000 

Austria-Hungary . 90,000 

Sweden and Norway . 35,000 

Netherlands . 27,000 

Denmark . 4,538 

All other European countries. 22,000 

Japan . 200,000 

Canada . 113,000 

Mexico . 4,000 

All other countries . 4,000 


Total . 7,633,000 


AMERICAN COTTON IMPORTATION. 


Cotton fabrics .$13,460,000 

Cotton yarns and threads. 3,921,000 

Threads, crochet and embroidery cot¬ 
tons . 4,169,000 

Knit goods . 9,032,000 

Lace curtains, laces and embroideries, 

edgings, etc. 33,611,000 

Clothing ready made, not included in 

knitted goods . 4,185,000 


Total .$68,379,000 


To the above must be added an im¬ 
portation (1908) of 69,000,000 pounds of 
Egyptian cotton. The Bulletin says: 

There are four principal reasons for the ex¬ 
tensive use of Egyptian cottons in the United 
States: (1) They are best adapted to mercerizing 
and other processes that give a high finish to 
cloth and cause it to resemble silk; (2) their ex¬ 
ceptional clearness (freedom from nap) and lus¬ 
ter, as well as their capacity for taking dyes, fit 
them for mixing with silk and for filling sateen, 
India linens, and similar goods having a brilliant 
surface; (3) the brown color of Mit Afifi fiber 
allows it to be used without dyeing in manufac¬ 
turing goods, such as Balbriggan underwear and 
la^e curtains, in which the ecru shade is desired; 
(4) they can be used for the manufacture of sew¬ 
ing thread and other articles which need to be 
very strong and for which no other type of cot¬ 
ton but sea-island is suitable. Owing to the high¬ 
er price of the latter, Egyptian cottons can in 
many cases be advantageously substituted. 

Except in cases where the brown-colored fiber 
is especially desired there seems to be little reason 
for preferring Egyptian to sea-island cotton, al¬ 
though one manufacturer reports that, within the 
range of the numbers used, the former furnishes 
a cleaner and better looking filling than either 
sea-island or peeler (long-staple upland) cottons. 
The highest grades of sea-island have longer and 
finer fiber than any other cotton, and therefore 
make stronger' and finer yarns and thread. For 
these grades the Egyptian can not be substituted, 
but in manufacturing various classes of goods 
the somewhat lower price of Egyptian cottons 
allows them to be used to advantage in place of 
the lower grades of sea-island, especially when 
the supply of the latter is below the normal: 

Apart from specific qualities of the fiber, Amer¬ 
ican manufacturers give other reasons for pre¬ 
ferring Egyptian cotton. They state that it is 
usually more carefully ginned, graded, and baled, 
and is apt to be freer from trash and short 
fiber, hence giving less waste in carding and 
combing than either sea-island or long-staple up¬ 
land cottons. Egyptian cotton is also esteemed 
for its evenness of staple, the different grades 
showing little variation in this respect from year 
to year. 

Egyptian cotton culture in the United States .— 
The Egyptian varieties are apparently best 
adapted to culture under irrigation in regions 





















































COTTON BOLL-WEEVIL 


where there is practically no rainfall during the 
growing season. The only part of the United 
States where these conditions exist and where at 
the same time the summers are long and hot 
enough for profitable cotton culture is the ex¬ 
treme Southwest, from western Texas to southern 
California. 

Since this type of cotton will continue to pro¬ 
duce bolls and ripen fiber until a hard frost oc¬ 
curs, it is obvious that the largest yields can be 
obtained in regions where the autumn tempera¬ 
tures are highest. We must therefore conclude 
that the greatest success with Egyptian cotton is 
to be expected in southern Arizona and south¬ 
eastern California—a conclusion that is supported 
by the experience so far gained. The valleys of 
the Salt River and of the Colorado River (Yuma 
Valley) in Arizona and the Imperial Valley in 
California have been found to be admirably 
adapted to the production of this type of cotton. 

Cotton Boll-Weevil, an insect pest of 
the southwest. Cotton has many enemies. 
Some of these foes are diseases of fungous, 
that is to say, of plant origin. Wilt, sore- 
shin, and rootknot beset the roots and 
stems. Leaf-spot, leaf-blight, and mildew 
attack the foliage. The bolls, with their 
precious contents of white fiber, are subject 
to rot and shedding. Animal foes are even 
more numerous. There are red spiders, 
plant lice, cutworms and caterpillars, web- 
worms, and borers. A blue-green cater¬ 
pillar, marked with black spots and stripes, 
known as the cotton-worm, is produced 
from the eggs of a brown moth. A similar 
caterpillar, known as the cotton boll-worm, 
is troublesome in gardens and cornfields, as 
well as in the cotton field. 

The chief pest of the cotton grower, 
however, is the cotton boll-weevil, which 
is said in the year 1907 to have destroyed 
in Texas alone no less than 1,000,000 bales 
of cotton, worth $50,000,000 or $60,000,- 
000. There are 11,000 beetles in the 
United States, but the home of this par¬ 
ticular one is supposed to be Central Amer¬ 
ica. The eggs of this weevil came to the 
United States, it is thought, in 1902, hav¬ 
ing crossed the Rio Grande into Texas 
in Mexican cotton brought to Brownsville 
to be ginned. The pest has spread north¬ 
ward and eastward, advancing like the Col¬ 
orado potato beetle, at the rate of about 
forty-five miles a year, and is now trou¬ 
blesome in Oklahoma and in Mississippi. 
The beetle deposits its eggs in the square, 
or young blossom of the cotton plant. In¬ 


stead of blooming and producing seed, 
with the white fibers so prized in com¬ 
merce, the square wilts and falls off. 

This Mexican weevil is a most serious 
menace to the cotton district. The United 
States Department of Agriculture has de¬ 
tailed specialists to fight it. Researches 
in Guatemala reveal the presence of a 
large red ant that makes a business of eat¬ 
ing the weevils alive. In Central Amer¬ 
ica these ants are numerous enough to 
prevent the spread of the insect. Colo¬ 
nies of ants were transported to Texas 
and began the work of devouring weevils, 
but our climate seems to be too dry for 
the ants. They have not prospered. Hopes 
of success from their aid have faded, 
though it is just possible that in the moist- 
er parts of the cotton belt, along the Mis¬ 
sissippi and eastward, in climatic condi¬ 
tions more like those of Central America, 
the Guatemalan ant may prove helpful. 

The cotton boll-weevil does not stand 
the American winter well. Comparatively 
few individuals live over. Several gen¬ 
erations live and die during the same sum¬ 
mer. It is not until late in the same year 
that the weevils are sufficient in number 
to master a cotton crop. Scientists are 
devoting themselves at the present time to 
the task of breeding an early cotton—a 
cotton that will mature in about 100 
days, and be ready to gather before 
the weevil army has massed in the fields. 

Those who are studying the situation 
have hopes, also, that aid may come from 
a native Texan fly. The flies are small 
creatures. They have been accustomed to 
lay their eggs in the larvae of a weevil 
that infests strawberry beds; but of late, 
they have taken a notion to plunge their 
eggs into the cotton-boll weevil. In some 
localities, they appear to have reduced the 
cotton-boll pest very remarkably. It is 
just possible that this new ally may prove 
as valuable in our cotton field as has the 
ant in Central America. At least, this 
is the hope of the Southern farmer. 

In unusually dry seasons the cotton boll- 
weevil suffers from the drouth. Like its 
fellow countryman, the Guatemalan ant, 
it is found at these times lying on the 
ground shriveled up and dead. 


COTTON GIN—COUNT 


Cotton Gin. See Cotton; Whitney, 
Eli. 

Cotton, John (1585-1652), a Puritan 
divine. He was born at Derby, England, 
and was educated at Cambridge Univer¬ 
sity. In 1612 he became vicar of St. Bo- 
tolph’s Church in Boston, Lincolnshire, for 
which our New England city was named. 
He leaned to Puritan doctrines. In 1633 
he was cited to appear before Archbishop 
Laud to answer for not kneeling at a cer¬ 
tain point in the services. To escape per¬ 
secution he fled to Boston, Massachusetts, 
where he was held in high honor as a 
pastor. One would think that his experi¬ 
ence might have made him charitable 
toward the religious views of others, but 
such was not the case. He was one of the 
foremost to hunt Ann Hutchinson out of 
Massachusetts Bay. Nevertheless, now 
that kindlier feeling prevails the world 
over, it is pleasant to learn that a tablet 
to his memory hangs in the old English 
church of which he was once the vicar. 
See Puritans. 

Cotton Picker. See Cotton. 

Cottonwood. See Poplar. 

Couch Grass. See Quack Grass. 

Cougar, koo'gar, the largest American 
animal of the cat family, called panther 
and “painter” in the Eastern States, moun¬ 
tain lion in the Rockies, and known some¬ 
times as the American puma. Cougar is 
the name used by the Indians of Brazil. 
The cougar has a reddish, tawny color, 
very much resembling that of the deer, on 
which indeed it chiefly feeds. It is from 
six to eight feet long. A large specimen 
weighs 225 pounds. It is readily mistaken 
by a deer, it is said, for one of its own 
kind. The cougar hunts like a cat, taking 
its position on the branch of a tree over¬ 
hanging the runway of the deer. It is an 
excellent climber. The cry of the male 
cougar is blood curdling, and has stricken 
terror into the heart of many a settler. The 
cry of the female is not unlike the wail of 
a child, a fact utilized by Cooper in his 
Deerslayer. The cougar has a wonderful 
cat-like faculty for stealing through under¬ 
growth, over rocks, and past obstructions 
without noise. When deer fail, it springs 
upon rabbits, squirrels, grouse, small birds, 


and small quadrupeds. Its visits are dread¬ 
ed by stock raisers from Montana to the 
Argentine Republic. It is still found in 
the Allegheny Mountains, but rarely. The 
cougar has a fierce, crafty, ferocious face; 
but, except in defence of its young, it sel¬ 
dom attacks man. It is hunted to best ad¬ 
vantage with dogs, who drive it into a tree 
and hold it there until the hunter arrives 
with his rifle. A menagerie is expected 
to pay about $75 for a good live specimen. 
The cougar in the East has been described 
in many hunting stories. Theodore 
Roosevelt’s Hunting Trips of a Ranchman 
gives some account of its depredations in 
the West. According to a peculiar cus¬ 
tom, corresponding to tiger worship in In¬ 
dia, the cougar was reverenced by the Cali¬ 
fornia Indians, who would not allow one 
to be killed. The skin of the cougar is 
much admired for rugs. A large skin is 
worth about $25. See Cat. 

Council Bluffs, the county seat of Pot¬ 
tawattamie County, Iowa. It is said to 
have been named from the fact that in 
1804 Lewis and Clark held a council 
with the Indians at this point. The city 
is located near the Missouri River, and is 
on the Union Pacific, the Chicago & 
North-Western, the Rock Island & Pacific, 
the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy and 
other railroads. Railroad and wagon 
bridges over the river connect Council 
Bluffs with Omaha and the city has ac¬ 
quired importance as a commercial center. 
Its manufactures include flour, paper, lum¬ 
ber, iron, agricultural implements, car¬ 
riages, engines, and fire extinguishers. The 
city is well laid out and has fine build¬ 
ings and beautiful parks. There is a pub¬ 
lic library, and the state institution for the 
deaf is located here. In 1910 the popula¬ 
tion was 29,292. 

Council of Nice. See Nice. 

Count, in spinning, the number given to 
thread or yarn to indicate the fineness. A 
“hank” of cotton contains 840 yards; when 
60 such hanks are required for a pound, 
the thread is No. 60; if 80 hanks make 
a pound, it is No. 80, etc. The count of 
spun silk is made in the same way. The 
count of reel silk is based upon the num¬ 
ber of thousands of yards to the ounce; 


COUNTERFEITING 


♦ 


the count of worsted yarn, upon the num¬ 
ber of hanks, each containing 560 yards, 
to the pound. The count of woollen yarns 
varies, but is usually based upon the num¬ 
ber of thousands of yards to the pound. 
The count of linen yarn is based upon the 
number of “leas,” each containing 300 
yards, to the pound. 

Counterfeiting, koun'ter-fit-ing, mak¬ 
ing imitations of money, either paper or 
coin. All countries punish the counter¬ 
feiter. For imitating paper money, the 
United States imposes a fine, not exceed¬ 
ing $5,000, and imprisonment for not to 
exceed fifteen years. For imitating coin, 
the fine is the same, with imprisonment 
not to exceed ten years. For making 
small coins such as cents and nickels, the 
penalty is not to exceed $1,000 fine and 
five years’ imprisonment. Similar penalties 
are prescribed by statute for having coun¬ 
terfeit money or counterfeiting tools in 
one’s possession. 

The government takes great pains to 
make the counterfeiting of paper money 
difficult. The paper used is a fine, firm 
kind of linen, made by a special process 
during which red and blue silk threads are 
mixed with the pulp in a way that is diffi¬ 
cult to imitate. When bought from out¬ 
side parties the government places the man¬ 
ufacturer under heavy bonds not to sell 
to private persons. The counterfeiter is 
obliged to imitate the threads of silk by 
colored marks made with a pen. Then, 
too, the engraving of the note is done 
by expensive machinery which a counter¬ 
feiter cannot afford to own. An examina¬ 
tion of a note will show that a single line 
winds round and round, wandering, one 
might say, all over the face of the note, 
forming scrolls and designs without a sin¬ 
gle break or irregularity or difference in 
breadth. Even the most skillful engraver 
cannot reproduce this scroll work perfect¬ 
ly by hand. Very few persons not in the 
employ of the government have the skill 
to do it at all. Government detectives keep 
track of the movements and occupations of 
all persons who are supposed to have ex¬ 
traordinary skill in such work. The Unit¬ 
ed States detective service gives a pathetic 
account of a New Jersey engraver, a most 


skillful man, whose utmost industry en¬ 
abled him to produce only one $20 green¬ 
back per week. Instead of earning an 
honest living, which his skill would have 
enabled him to do easily, he seemed to have 
a passion for going to New York City to 
pass off his weekly bill. He was caught 
finally and sent to prison, a fate which is 
almost certain to overtake the counterfeit¬ 
er. In 1905 the United States secret serv¬ 
ice men made 532 arrests for counterfeit¬ 
ing. As to nationality, 392 were Americans; 
42, Italians; and 15 were Austrians. Of 
these, 94 were taken in Pennsylvania and 
77 in New York. 

A favorite method of the counterfeiter 
is to raise the value of a bill from $2 to 
$20, but this is an exceedingly clumsy de¬ 
vice and is detected easily. The govern¬ 
ment follows the policy of changing the 
designs of its notes quite frequently. Old¬ 
er bills are withdrawn from circulation. 
The work of counterfeiting bills is so dif¬ 
ficult and requires so much skill that an 
engraver can make more money in the 
honest prosecution of his art. 

It is easier to counterfeit coins. If the 
money could be cast it would be very easy 
indeed; but in order that a cast may be 
clear and sharp the metal must expand 
slightly in cooling, which is not the case 
with the precious metals. The counterfeit¬ 
er must necessarily construct a sort of die 
with which to stamp his counterfeit money. 
The slightest irregularity or change in the 
stamp can be detected by a skillful banker. 
In the case of gold coins, the gold itself 
is worth as much as the coin, so that there 
is no profit in counterfeiting unless some 
cheaper material is used. A cheap mater¬ 
ial may be detected by its color, ring, and 
weight. For these reasons counterfeit gold 
coins are scarce. Silver coins, nickels, and 
cents are worth more than the material they 
contain. They are less difficult to coun¬ 
terfeit. Alloys of lead are used in place 
of silver; but the profit of counterfeiting 
in pure coin metal is quite sufficient to 
tempt the skillful rogue. Government 
detectives follow up all suspicious pur¬ 
chases of silver to make certain that the 
buyer intends to use it for honest purposes. 
When genuine silver is used, the only clue 


COUNTING GLASS—COURTS OF LAW 


to the counterfeit is in the patterns stamped 
on the faces of the coin. False silver coins 
sometimes counterfeit the genuine very 
closely. Having the same weight, ring, and 
color they are difficult to detect. 

See Coin; Mint; Money. 

Counting Glass, a magnifying glass 
used for the purpose of counting the 
threads in the warp or woof of woven 
fabrics. The magnifying glass or lens, us¬ 
ually small, is fixed in a small frame which 
is hinged to an upright. The upright is 
in turn hinged to a footpiece in which 
there is a square opening, one-fourth of an 
inch to an inch square. The three pieces 
of the instrument can thus be folded togeth¬ 
er and carried in the pocket. By the aid 
of the glass, it is an easy matter to count 
the number of threads crossing the square. 
The glass for counting threads in linen is 
called a Belfast linen prover. 

Coursing, in the United States, follow¬ 
ing the large hare—the “jackrabbit”— 
with greyhounds. It is practiced chiefly in 
the prairie region west of the Mississippi 
from Texas northward. The hunt, on 
horseback, of course, is under control of 
a leader. When a “jack” starts up from 
his form in a tuft of grass two hounds 
are loosed. They follow by sight, but a 
course may extend over several miles. In 
a perfectly open country the odds are all 
against the hare. It jumps sideways or 
turns suddenly, allowing the hounds to 
pass; but unless it can reach rough ground, 
or get out of sight in cover, it has no 
chance for its life. The hound that catch¬ 
es the hare is not necessarily the winner. 
The hound that courses away leaving its 
competitor behind scores a point or two. 
The hound that overtakes and passes its 
competitor scores still more. Other scores 
are a quick turn at right angles, a turn 
at an acute angle, tripping the hare with¬ 
out seizing it, and actual killing. The vari¬ 
ous credits on points as previously agreed 
upon are kept on a card and footed. The 
hound having the greatest total is decreed 
the winner. The winners in two different 
couples are then matched for a course to¬ 
gether, and so on. A hound wins a season 
according to the same rules that govern a 
winning football team. See Hare; Dog. 


Court-Martial, a military court con¬ 
vened to try a soldier for an offense against 
military law, as mutiny, desertion, breach 
of orders, conduct unbecoming a soldier, 
etc. As provided by the statutes of the 
United States, a court-martial may consist 
of from five to thirteen commissioned of¬ 
ficers above the rank of second-lieutenant. 
It may be convened by the commander. 
The members of the court must hold rank 
superior to that of the accused, that their 
chance for promotion may not be increased 
by his punishment. The finding of the 
court is of force only when approved by 
higher authority. In case of death penalty 
the finding must be approved by the sec¬ 
retary of war or the president. 

Courts of Law, United States. Much 
confusion exists on this subject because 
certain state and federal courts are not 
designated uniformly. This confusion can 
be avoided largely by remembering that 
there are* two great divisions of courts, 
the federal or national courts, with a jur¬ 
isdiction somewhat narrowly limited by 
the Constitution of the United States; and 
the state courts before which comes the 
great body of business touching everyday 
life. These divisions will be treated sep¬ 
arately. 

Federal Courts. The Constitution pro¬ 
vided simply for a Supreme Court and 
such inferior courts as Congress may from 
time to time establish. The Supreme Court 
was organized under President Washing¬ 
ton; it consists of a Chief Justice and 
eight Associate Justices. The most im¬ 
portant business brought before it touches 
questions of constitutional law appealed 
from lower federal courts or from state 
courts. Six judges must be present at each 
trial and a majority is necessary for a 
decision. 

Directly below the Supreme Court are 
the Circuit Courts of Appeals; the United 
States is divided into nine great circuits, 
in each of which is a court. They were 
created in 1891 to relieve the overbur¬ 
dened Supreme Court. The act provided 
that a Justice of the Supreme Court be 
assigned to each circuit, that an addition¬ 
al circuit judge be appointed for each cir¬ 
cuit, and that the judges of the United 


COURTS OF LAW, UNITED STATES 


States District Courts within that circuit 
be competent to sit as judges of the Cir¬ 
cuit Court of Appeals. A Circuit Court 
of Appeals may consist of any three of 
these judges, two of which form a quo¬ 
rum, though of course no judge before 
whom a case has been tried in a District 
or Circuit Court may sit on trial or hear¬ 
ing of that case in the Circuit Court of 
Appeals. All cases appealed from the 
lower federal courts not involving a ques¬ 
tion of constitutionality go to this court; 
reserved for the Supreme Court are those 
only which involve a question as to wheth¬ 
er or not a law is in harmony with the 
Constitution. It is rather easy, however, 
to raise this question, so the new court has 
not been able to fufill the expectation that 
it would relieve the great judicial body at 
Washington. 

Immediately below the Circuit Court 
of Appeals are the Circuit Courts. In 
each of these nine great circuits mentioned 
above are two, three or four judges, and 
to each of these circuits is assigned one of 
the nine Justices of the Supreme Court. 
As a matter of fact the Justices of the 
Supreme Court seldom take part in trying 
cases in Circuit Courts, and the Circuit 
Judges actually bearing the title find their 
time taken up with the Circuit Court of 
Appeals. Hence it often happens that 
the district judge and the circuit judge are 
the same person. A movement is under 
way in Congress to consolidate the Circuit 
and the District Courts under the name of 
District Court. The jurisdiction of the 
Circuit Court is too complicated a matter 
to be given here, for it is greatly involved 
with that of the District Court. It has 
sole jurisdiction, however, over suits be¬ 
tween citizens of different states involving 
$2,000 or more above costs, over acts in re¬ 
straint of trade, offenses against the con¬ 
tract labor law, and other matters definite¬ 
ly prescribed by acts of Congress. 

Lowest of the federal courts are. the 
District Courts. There are about ninety 
districts in the United States, each of 
which has usually one judge. The juris¬ 
diction of the District Court, like that of 
the Circuit Court, is so involved that only # 
a practicing lawyer need study it. Much 


confusion would be avoided if the two 
courts were consolidated. 

In general, the federal courts have jur¬ 
isdiction over all cases affecting ambas¬ 
sadors, other public ministers, and con¬ 
suls ; controversies between two or more 
states, between a state and citizens of an¬ 
other state, between citizens of different 
states, between a state or its citizens and 
foreign states, citizens or subjects, and in 
all cases which, to obtain a correct deci¬ 
sion, involve the Constitution, laws, or 
treaties of the United States. In addi¬ 
tion to the four kinds of courts named 
above, Congress has established at differ¬ 
ent times, various special courts, such as 
the Court of Alaska and the Courf of 
Commerce. 

State Courts. Almost every man comes 
in contact sometime with the state courts, 
if it be only to serve on a jury or act as 
a witness in a lawsuit. The names by 
which the same courts are known in differ¬ 
ent states often vary, but in all the states 
there is practically the same progressive 
series of courts. 

The courts of justices of the peace stand 
at the bottom of the scale. In them are 
tried civil cases involving small amounts, 
and petty offenses. In great cities such 
civil cases are usually tried in municipal 
civil courts, and the criminal actions in 
the police courts. 

Most states have county courts, some¬ 
times styled district courts or courts of com¬ 
mon pleas. In them are tried suits involv¬ 
ing considerable sums and cases appealed 
from justices of the peace. They have 
also extensive criminal jurisdiction. In 
many states there is a superior, circuit or 
district court, immediately above the coun¬ 
ty court, which has wide jurisdiction in 
civil and criminal matters. The judges 
for such a court are generally chosen for 
districts larger than the county, holding 
terms of court in each county of their dis¬ 
trict or circuit. Every state has a court 
of last appeal, known variously as supreme 
court, court of appeals, court of errors and 
appeals, or supreme judicial court, which 
deals usually with appeals on questions of 
law, not of fact. (Some cases may be 
taken direct to the U. S. Supreme Court.) 


COUSIN—COVENANTERS 


Besides these four, there are sometimes 
special tribunals for special purposes, such 
as probate courts, called also surrogates’ 
and orphans’ courts for trials involving 
the estates of deceased persons; juvenile 
courts for children who have committed 
offenses; and courts of claims for hearing 
claims against the state. See J ury ; 
Habeas Corpus; Mandamus. 

Cousin, koo-zan', Victor (1792-1867), 
an eminent French educator and philoso¬ 
pher. Cousin was the son of a Parisian 
watchmaker in the famous Quartier St. 
Antoine. He saw stirring times in the 
days of his youth. When of suitable age 
he attended the Lycee, or Latin school, in 
his part of the city. Later he entered the 
normal school of Paris, in which he be¬ 
came an instructor in Greek. During the 
intolerant days of Louis XVIII the nor¬ 
mal school was abolished, and Cousin, who 
had acquired quite a reputation as a rising 
philosopher, was thrown out of his posi¬ 
tion. Losing no time on this account he 
took up his studies in earnest; traveled, 
mainly in Germany, and published several 
treatises. After seven years, a change in 
government restored him to his work, and 
he became professor of philosophy in the 
University of Paris. His lectures were 
brilliant and earnest and gave a new im¬ 
petus to the subject. 

In 1830 Cousin’s colleague, Guizot, be¬ 
came the head of a new ministry, and he 
was invited to leave his lecture room for 
a membership in the council of education. 
Thirty years before, the French Revolution 
had promised France adequate public 
schools, and it now became Cousin’s priv¬ 
ilege to draft a bill establishing such a 
system, and to plan and work for its de¬ 
velopment. Abstract philosophy and the 
pleasures of scholarship were laid aside. 
Cousin traveled again extensively, investi¬ 
gating the systems of schools in Europe. 
Two reports, one on the State of Primary 
Education in Several of the States of Ger¬ 
many, Particularly Prussia, another on 
Public Instruction in Holland, attracted 
world wide attention. They were trans¬ 
lated into English. Reprints were distrib¬ 
uted at state expense in Massachusetts and 
New Jersey. Without doubt these reports 


were the beginning of a popular belief 
in the superiority of German schools. 

Cousin was the recipient of many hon¬ 
ors and distinctions, but he was kind 
enough to say, “None has touched me more 
than the title of Foreign Member of the 
American Institute for Education.” Vic¬ 
tor Cousin is now most frequently quoted 
as a philosopher; but his claim to renown 
will rest finally on the service he was hap¬ 
pily enabled to render the cause of public 
education. 

Covenanters, adherents of the early 
church of Scotland. When James VI, the 
Presbyterian king of Scotland, became 
James I of England, he also became the 
head of the Episcopal church. His son, 
Charles I, who was afterward beheaded, 
showed a disposition to substitute the 
church service and prayer book of Eng¬ 
land for the Presbyterian forms of worship 
in Scotland. The Presbyterians bound 
themselves by a covenant in 1638 to re¬ 
sist. In 1643 the Scottish leaders formed a 
solemn league and covenant with the Par¬ 
liament of England, then largely Presby¬ 
terian, to oppose Episcopacy throughout 
England and to set up churches on the 
Presbyterian model. After the restoration of 
Charles II to the throne of England, he 
undertook to root out Presbyterianism in 
Scotland. A period of persecution fol¬ 
lowed. The Covenanters, as the adherents 
of the Presbyterian faith were called, were 
in hard straits. They were obliged to hold 
their meetings in unfrequented places sur¬ 
rounded by bogs, among the mountains, in 
caves and elsewhere. Oftentimes their 
meetings were surprised. Several hundred 
persons were put to death by English troop¬ 
ers. In the eye of English authorities, 
their faith came to be regarded as treason¬ 
able, for the Covenanters were all sworn 
opponents of the Stuart family. Persecu¬ 
tions ceased with the accession of William 
and Mary in 1688. The Presbyterians 
again resumed services in their accustomed 
places of worship. In the meantime many 
families had migrated to the Carolinas, 
where their descendants gave a good ac¬ 
count of themselves in the American Rev¬ 
olution, as may be seen in histories of that 
famous contest. 


COVENT GARDEN—COVENTRY 


The following inscription from the kirk- 
yard of Old Cathcart, near Glasgow, is 
one of many hundreds of similar import: 

THIS*IS*THE*STONE*TOMB*OF*ROB 

ERT*THOME*THOMAS*COOKE*AND 

JOHN*URIF*MARTYRS*FOR*OUNNG 

THE*COVENANTD*UORK*OF*RE 

FORMATION*THE*ll OF*MAY*1685. 

THE*BLOODY*MURDERS*OF*THESE*MEN 

UERE*MAGOR*BALFOUR*AND*CAPTAIN*METLA 

AND*UITH*THEM*OTHERS*UERE*NOT*FR£E 

caused*them*to*search*in*palmadie 

AS*SOON*AS*THEY*HAD*THEM*OUT*FOUND 

TIIEY*MURTHERED*THEM*WITH*SHOTS^OF^GUNS 

SCARCE*TIME*DID*THEY*TO*THEM*ALLOU 

BEFOR*THER*MAKER*THER*KNIES*TO*BOU 

MANY*LIKE*IN*THIS*LAND*HAVE*BEEN 

WHOS*BLOOD*FOk*WINGANCE*CRYS*TO*HEAVN 

THIS^CRUELL^WICKEDNESS^YOW^SEE 

WAS*DON*IN*LON*OF*PALMADIE 

THIS*MAY*A*STANDING*WITNESS*BE 

TUIXT*PRESBYTRIE*AND*PRELACIE. 

The graves of the Covenanters are to 
be found in the old churchyards all over 
southern Scotland. They are guarded with 
special reverence. In accordance with the 
custom of the times, the gravestones are 
large slabs, the size of a grave. They lie 
flat on the ground, sometimes so close to¬ 
gether as to form a sort of pavement. When 
the letters are worn shallow by frequent 
tramping, they are recut. In Old Mor¬ 
tality, Walter Scott describes an odd 
character whose business it was to recut in¬ 
scriptions. 

Covent Garden, a garden once be¬ 
longing to the abbot of Westminster. The 
original spelling was Convent. The old 
garden was cultivated by monks. It was 
surrounded by a wall, and extended from 
the Strand to the open country. In 1552 
the land, some seven acres, passed into the 
hands of the Bedford family as a gift from 
the king. This gift was accompanied by 
a permit to maintain a market, with which 
none should be allowed to compete. Market 
gardeners sold their vegetables here. In 
1831 the Duke of Bedford erected vast 
market buildings, in which the housewife 
may do her shopping. He derives a rev¬ 
enue of $75,000,000 a year from rentals. 
London citizens complain of this monopo¬ 
ly and point to the fact that the city of 
Manchester derives a revenue of 1 $70,- 
000,000 from a similar market owned by 


the public. The Covent Garden Market 
is now one of the sights of London. It is 
the greatest fruit, flower, and vegetable 
market in the world. The utmost neatness 
is required. From eight to ten in the morn¬ 
ing the show of fruit and the fragrance and 
brilliancy of the flowers convert the mar¬ 
ket into a paradise. The Garden gives its 
name to the locality, and to a number of 
buildings in the vicinity, including Covent 
Garden Theater, open only to money and 
full dress. 

Coventry, a city in Warwickshire. It 
is an old English town. A Benedictine 
monastery was established in 1044 by the 
Lady Godiva. As early as 1392 mystery 
and morality plays were presented by the 
Gray Friars. A series of forty-two of 
these plays, covering Bible history from the 
creation of the Garden of Eden to the 
Last Supper and the day of resurrection, 
has been preserved, and is known as the 
Coventry Plays. They are of first impor¬ 
tance to the student who is endeavoring to 
understand the early English drama. The 
city was fortified. It is stated that at one 
time Coventry had a military garrison of 
such repute that a woman seen conversing 
with a red coat was at once reckoned an 
outcast. The citizens would hold no inter¬ 
course with the soldiers, not even with the 
officers. Very naturally a young officer, 
likely enough of good family, was averse 
to being “sent to Coventry,” where he 
would be debarred from desirable associa¬ 
tions. Whatever its exact origin the phrase 
still lingers. When army men cut the ac¬ 
quaintance of a fellow officer they are said 
“to send him to Coventry,” and when one 
is excluded from polite society he is said 
to be “sent to Coventry.” The Coventry 
of today is a modern city. The old walls 
have disappeared. The cathedral fell in 
the reign of Henry VIII. According to 
Chambers the present parish church is the 
largest in England. Few old buildings re¬ 
main. Coventry is a manufacturing and 
market town of some note. The city was 
at one time famous for the manufacture of 
ribbons. It is now known for bicycles, 
clocks, aftd watches. There are railway 
connections and an extensive canal system. 
The population in 1909 was about 80,000. 


COVERDALE—COW 


Coverdale, Miles (1488-1568), an 
English bishop and reformer. He was ed¬ 
ucated at Cambridge and was ordained a 
priest at Norwich in 1514. He was led 
to embrace the reformed doctrines. In 
1535 he published a translation of the 
Scriptures, dedicated to Henry VIII. This 
was the first printed version of the entire 
Bible. He went to France and was en¬ 
gaged in superintending the printing of a 
revised English version, when interrupted 
by the ecclesiastical authorities, who seized 
and destroyed the greater part of the im¬ 
pressions already completed. The types 
and presses were taken to England and 
enabled Cranmer’s Bible, called the Great 
Bible, to be printed. Coverdale was made 
bishop of Exeter during the reign of 
Edward VI; but, on the accession of Mary, 
he was ejected and thrown into prison. 
After two years he was liberated and went 
abroad, where he assisted in preparing the 
Geneva Bible. His writings are numerous. 

Coverley, Sir Roger de, the chief 
member of an imaginary club under whose 
direction the Spectator was professedly ed¬ 
ited. The character was originally sketched 
by Steele, but developed by Addison. Sir 
Roger is represented as a country gen¬ 
tleman, simple minded but warm hearted, 
amiable, and eccentric. See Addison ; 
Spectator. 

Sir Roger de Coverley is not to be described 
by any pen but that of Addison. He exhibits, 
joined to a perfect simplicity, the qualities of a 
just, honest, useful man, and delightful com¬ 
panion. . . . Addison dwelt with tenderness on 
every detail regarding him, and finally described 
Sir Roger’s death to prevent any less reverential 
pen from trifling with his hero.—Tuckerman. 

Covington, the county seat of Kenton 
County, Kentucky. It is situated on the 
Ohio River opposite Cincinnati, with which 
city it is connected by a fine suspension 
bridge 2,250 feet long. Many Cincinnati 
business men have made their homes in 
Covington, which has thus gained note as 
a city of fine residences. It has also a 
public library, a United States govern¬ 
ment building, and a Roman Catholic 
cathedral with which are connected a 
foundling asylum, a hospital, an academy, 
a priory, and a convent. Covington is the 


center for farming and livestock interests 
of north central Kentucky. It is served 
by two railroads and has steamboat con¬ 
nections with all point on the Ohio River. 
Its industries include pork-packing and 
the manufacture of flour, tobacco, distilled 
liquors, glass, leather, tinware, stoves, fur¬ 
niture, bricks, and pottery. In 1910 the 
population of Covington was 53,270. 

Cow, the adult female of the ox kind. 
The term has been extended to include 
many other, chiefly large animals, as the 
cow moose, cow whale, etc. A female calf 
is called a heifer. For some notion of the 
economic importance of the cow, see arti¬ 
cles on Butter and Cheese. 

Our best dairy cows are obtained from 
particular districts of Europe. The brown 
Swiss, a middle-sized, small-boned, gentle 
cow with a black nose, tongue, hoofs, and 
tail, comes from Switzerland. Holstein 
cows are large black and white animals 
with an enormous yield of milk of not 
inferior quality. Individual cows of this 
breed are credited with as high as 20,000 
pounds of milk in a single year. The 
Ayrshire breed of red and white cows orig¬ 
inated in Scotland. The Devon cow from 
South England is almost entirely red. The 
Jerseys and the Guernseys are from the 
Channel Islands between England and 
France. Durhams are a large red and 
white breed from England, celebrated more 
for beef; yet a Durham, or short horned 
cow is reported from Wisconsin as yielding 
584 pounds of butter in a year. Her own¬ 
er states that it cost him $39.60 for feed, 
and that the total value of her production 
was $131.83. The cow is a wonderful pro¬ 
ducer of food. The Nebraska experiment 
station claims a cow that produces 17,000 
pounds of milk yielding 650 pounds . of 
butter in a year. The Princess Carlotta, 
a Holstein cow owned by the dairy 
department of the University of Missouri, 
in one year produced 18,405 pounds of 
milk,—more human food in her milk than 
is contained in the complete carcasses of 
four steers weighing 1,250 pounds each. 
Successful dairymen consider that it costs 
no more to keep a productive animal than 
a poor one. 


COWBIRD—COWLEY 


The importance of the cow in modern 
civilization may be seen by the following 
statistics taken from the last United States 
census. It should be remembered that the 
United States is only one of a number of 
countries in which cows are kept for dairy¬ 
ing purposes. 

Total number of cows in the United 


States . 20,625,432 

Average yield of milk in gallons. . . 282 

Annual yield of milk in gallons.... 5,813,699,474 

Annual production of cheese in 

pounds . 9,405,864 

Annual production of butter in 

pounds . 994,650,610 


To this enormous production must be 
added the cow’s share of beef and leather. 

The Orange Judd Farmer ventured the 
following estimate of the number and val¬ 
ue of milk cows by states January 1, 1909: 



Number. 

Value. 

New England . 

. 1,039,000 

$38,443,000 

New York . 

. 1,819,000 

62,756,000 

New Jersey . 

. 191,000 

8,022,000 

Pennsylvania . 

. 1,163,000 

43,322,000 

Texas . 


26,775,000 

Arkansas . 

. 342,000 

7,250,000 

Tennessee . 

. 378,000 

7,828,000 

West Virginia . 

. 212,000 

6,572,000 

Kentucky . 

. 394,000 

11,465,000 

Ohio . 

. 921,000 

34,031,000 

Michigan . 

. 800,000 

27,600,000 

Indiana . 

. 656,000 

22,828,000 

Illinois . 

. 1,287,000 

49,228,000 

Wisconsin . 

. 1,201,000 

37,111,000 

Minnesota . 

. 1,025,000 

31,006,000 

Iowa. 

. 1,684,000 

57,677,000 

Missouri . 

. 845,000 

25,688,000 

Kansas . 

. 872,000 

27,294,000 

Nebraska . 

. 750,000 

22,388,000 

North Dakota . 

. 241,000 

7,519,000 

South Dakota . 

. 620,000 

17,081,000 

Colorado . 

. 411,000 

14,693,000 

Oregon . 

. 175,000 

6,563,000 

Washington . 

. 172,000 

6,364,000 

Oklahoma . 

. 225,000 

6,345,000 

Other states . 

. 2,614,000 

68,964,000 


Total .21,087,000 $674,813,000 

The average value of the American cow 
is placed at $32 per head. From the 1910 
census we see that the total annual value 
of the various dairy products was $596,- 
413,463. One strong argument in favor 
of dairying is the well known principle 
that the sale of butter and cheese robs the 
farm of little plant food. A dairy farm 
well managed grows more and more pro¬ 
ductive. 


Cowbird, a member of the blackbird 

family. The male has a coffee-colored 
head, neck and breast of brown, with a 
glossy black body, lustrous with bluish and 
greenish reflections. The female is clad 
in a dark, brownish gray suit. Range, from 
Texas to Manitoba and eastward. Small 
flocks of a dozen or fewer individuals fol¬ 
low cattle about the pasture and haunt the 
milking yard, apparently for the insects 
they can catch. The cowbird builds no 
nest. The female leaves the flock, sneaks 
about, and drops her egg in the nest of 
a sparrow or other small bird. She leaves 
it to be hatched and her young to be 
reared by the unsuspecting dupe. The 
young cowbird is large, greedy, and selfish, 
frequently shouldering the rightful occu¬ 
pants out of the nest. When well grown 
it leaves its drudging foster mother and 
joins those of its own kind. For the char¬ 
acteristics of an English bird of another 
family, but with similar habits, see Cuckoo. 

Cowley, Abraham (1618-1667), an 
English poet. At the age of fifteen, while 
attending Westminster School, he published 
his first volume of poems, Poetical Blos¬ 
soms. He was elected a scholar of Trin¬ 
ity College, Cambridge, where he attained 
literary distinction. He was ejected from 
Cambridge as a royalist, and removed to 
Oxford, where he published a satirical 
poem entitled The Puritan and the Papist. 
Still identified with the Royalists, he fol¬ 
lowed Queen Henrietta to France in 1646, 
where he remained until 1656. He re¬ 
turned to England and settled at Chertsey. 
Among his poetical writings are Miscel¬ 
lanies, The Mistress, Pindarique Odes, and 
an unfinished epic on King David. In 
prose he wrote Proposition for the Ad¬ 
vancement of Experimental Philosophy, 
Discourse by Way of Vision concerning 
the Government of Oliver Cromwell, and 
others. As a poet he was extremely pop¬ 
ular in his day, but fifty years after his 
death his poetry was already a thing of the 
past. 

QUOTATIONS. 

Hope, of all ills that men endure. 

The only cheap and universal cure. 

Nothing is there to come, and nothing past, 

But an eternal now does always last. 



































COWPEA—COWPER 


God the first garden made, and the first city Cain. 

Thus would I double my life’s fading space; 
For he that runs it well, runs twice his race. 

I would not fear nor wish my fate, 

But boldly say each night,— 

To-morrow let my sun his beams display, 

Or in clouds hide them; I have lived to-day. 

Abraham Cowley, who at one time was ranked 
amongst the greatest of our poets, is now read 
by few. He is a curious relic of that school of 
poetry which rejected simplicity as beneath the 
dignity of verse, and aimed at expressing the 
most extravagant thoughts in the most hyper¬ 
bolical language. Wit and learning he undoubt¬ 
edly had ; but in his poetry his learning becomes 
pedantry and his wit affectation. His prose writ¬ 
ings, unlike his poetry, are elegant without ex¬ 
aggeration.—Knight. 

Cowley was an author by profession, the oldest 
of those who in England deserve the name.—• 
Taine. 

Cowpea, a summer annual, in appear¬ 
ance resembling the field bean. The cow¬ 
pea is a native of India and possibly of 
China. In the East it has been under cul¬ 
tivation for the last two thousand years. 
In the cotton belt of the United States, 
the cowpea takes the place of the red clov¬ 
er of more northern and cooler regions. 
The leaf of the cowpea is tri-foliate. The 
flowers vary from purple to white. The 
pods are from five to ten inches in length 
and are well filled with kidney-shaped or 
roundish peas. There are numerous varie¬ 
ties. Several, known as crowders, are so 
called because the beans are crowded to¬ 
gether so closely as to have flattened ends. 
So far as frost is concerned, the cowpea 
is very tender. Along the Gulf seed is 
sown in April. In Delaware it is sown as 
late as July. Like clover and alfalfa, the 
roots of the cowpea bear tubercles that 
store up nitrogen. The raising of a crop 
of cowpeas fertilizes the soil. The crop 
is cured like a crop of clover or alfalfa. 
Stacks of cowpea hay have little power to 
turn rain. The crop, therefore, requires 
barns or other protection. 

Cowpens, a battlefield near the north¬ 
ern border of South Carolina, not far from 
King’s Mountain. It was covered with 
timber and undergrowth. General Mor¬ 
gan, with 900 men, January 17, 1781, took 
position on two knolls, with his rear on 
the Broad River so that his militia could 


not run away. Tarleton, the famous cav¬ 
alry commander of Cornwallis, attacked 
with 1,100 men. The American militia 
deployed in front, used their rifles with 
good effect, and drew away into shelter. 
Tarleton, thinking the day was his, sound¬ 
ed a charge straight for the river. He 
was met by a central force of American 
riflemen, good for a squirrel’s head at a 
hundred paces. The militia under Andrew 
Pickens reformed in shelter of a hill and 
fell on one flank; the American cavalry 
under William Washington fell on the 
other. Altogether they made short work of 
the British. Two hundred and seventy 
were killed and wounded; 600 were taken 
prisoners; and over 1,000 muskets were 
captured. Only twelve Americans were 
killed. Tarleton fled with a handful of 
followers. The defeat, coming so soon af¬ 
ter King’s Mountain, was a severe blow to 
Cornwallis, and encouraged the American 
patriots greatly. See Cornwallis. 

Cowper, William, pronounced cooper 
(1731-1800), an English poet. His fath¬ 
er was court chaplain. William was 
trained for the law. He received a gov¬ 
ernment clerkship, and lost his mind while 
studying to take examinations. He sank 
into a sort of religious mania from which, 
however, he emerged to write a number of 
elevated, graceful poems. He died in ut¬ 
ter madness and despair. His more ma¬ 
ture poems are: Moral Satires, written in 
imitation of Pope; The Task, in praise of 
a quiet, secluded country life, a poem 
much admired by Burns; a Translation of 
Homer; The Loss of the Royal George, 
a warship that went down in the English 
Channel with terrible loss of life; To 
Mary, in honor of a lady friend; Alexan¬ 
der Selkirk, opening with the well known 
lines, 

I am monarch of all I survey, 

My right there is none to dispute; 

and lastly, John Gilpin's Ride, betray¬ 
ing an unexpected but none the less de¬ 
lightful vein of humor and fun in the 
poet’s makeup. 

SAYINGS. 

God made the country, man made the town. 

/ 

Not much the worse for wear. 


COWRY—COXEY 


How much a dunce that has been sent to roam, 
Excels a dunce that has been kept at home. 

Absence of occupation is not rest, 

A mind quite vacant is a mind distress’d. 

An idler is a watch that wants both hands, 

As useless if it goes as if it stands. 

Ilis wit invites you by his looks to come, 

But when you knock, it never is at home. 

Oh for a lodge in some vast wilderness. 

Variety’s the very spice of life. 

She that asks 

Her dear five hundred friends. 

Knowledge is proud that he has learn’d so much; 
Wisdom is humble that he knows no more. 

SAID OF COWPER. 

Cowper was the most popular poet of his gen¬ 
eration, and the best of English letter writers.—• 
Southey. 

Poor charming soul, perishing like a frail 
flower transplanted from a warm land to the 
snow : the world’s temperature was too rough for 
it; and the moral law, which should have sup¬ 
ported it, tore it with its thorns.—Taine. 

Cowper’s style is natural and firm, though 
sometimes dull. He helped to rid poetry of its 
artificiality.—Emery. 

Cowry, a small shell of eastern waters, 
formerly in demand by the natives of west¬ 
ern Africa for ornaments. Strings of cowry 
were used to purchase ivory or any other 
commodity the negroes had to sell. Brit¬ 
ish merchants used to collect immense 
quantities of money cowry in the East In¬ 
dies for purposes of barter. Three hun¬ 
dred tons a year were brought to Liverpool 
during the middle of the nineteenth cen¬ 
tury. Cowry shells still have value among 
some tribes. The money cowry is about an 
inch long and is almost as wide. Roughly 
speaking, it may be likened to a small 
egg slit the length of one side with the 
edges tucked in. It has a yellow or white 
shell, not especially beautiful. When the 
English took possession of India, cowry 
shells were in regular use as money, at the 
rate of about one-sixth of a cent per doz¬ 
en. See Wampum; Barter. 

Cowslip, a beautiful flowering plant of 
Europe. It belongs to the primula fam¬ 
ily. A number of scapes, a hand’s breadth 
or more in height, spring from a rosette of 
soft, oval leaves. Each bears a one-sided 
umbel of fragrant yellow flowers. As is 
the case with the robin, American settlers 


have brought the name to America. It has 
been given to plants that have no relation¬ 
ship to the English cowslip. Among the 
flowers falsely called cowslips are the 
marsh marigold of early spring and the 
Virginian lungwort or bluebell. The 
shooting star, with its blue pendulous flow¬ 
ers and recurved petals, is related to the 
cowslip of Europe. It may be called the 
American cowslip. See Cyclamen ; Prim¬ 
rose. 

Cox, Palmer (1840-), an American 
artist and author, creator of the “Brown¬ 
ies.” He was born at Granby, Quebec, 
and educated at the Granby Academy. 
When but twenty-three years old he went 
West, living in San Francisco until 1875, 
where he wrote and sketched for period¬ 
icals. He removed then to New York, 
where he published the inimitable illustrat¬ 
ed “Brownie” verses, among them The 
Brownie Stories, The Brownies at Home, 
The Brownies in Fairyland, The Brownies 
through the Union, etc. They appeared 
first in popular periodicals. 

Coxey, Jacob Selcher (1854-), the 
leader of “Coxey’s Army.” Mr. Coxey 
was born in Pennsylvania. He worked 
in a rolling mill, became the owner of a 
sandstone quarry at Massillon, Ohio, where 
he still lives (1909), a prosperous man, 
worth perhaps $200,000. Originally an 
Episcopalian, he became interested in the¬ 
osophy. He took an interest in public af¬ 
fairs. In 1892 he urged Congress to is¬ 
sue legal tender treasury notes to the value 
of $500,000,000 to be expended in building 
good roads. In 1894 he arranged with 
Mr. Carl Browne, whom he had met at 
a silver convention, to lead an army of the 
unemployed to Washington to present a 
petition to Congress on the steps of the 
Capitol, and to camp there until favorable 
action had been taken. Senator Peffer of 
Kansas was to introduce the desired meas¬ 
ure—a good roads bill which should give 
unemployed men work. Payment was to 
be made in legal tender paper currency, 
to be. had for the cost of printing. The 
army was to enlist 100,000 men. As a 
matter of fact it never exceeded 500 men. 
“The Commonweal of Christ,” as the 
army was called, started from Massillon 


COYOTE 



Easter morning, March 24, 1894. It was 
a motley, but orderly crowd. Some were 
tramps; some were men out of employ¬ 
ment. A negro carrying the flag of the 
United States led the way. Carl Browne, 
clad in fringed buckskin and wearing a 
cowboy’s broad brimmed sombrero, rode a 
gray mare. Next marched the trumpeter, 
“Windy Oliver,” followed by “Cyclone” 
Kirkland of Pittsburg and seven musicians. 
General Coxey himself, the owner of a 
fine Kentucky farm, rode in a buggy drawn 
by a pair of bay mares. Mrs. Coxey, her 
sister, a daughter, and an infant son named 
“Legal Tender,” followed in a carriage. 
Behind these strode a second negro bear¬ 
ing a banner with a portrait of Christ 
and a legend, “Death to interest-bearing 
bonds.” About one hundred men formed 
the army proper. Ninety-nine thousand 
nine hundred more were expected to 
join the army on the way. Three wagons 
carried a circus tent and supplies. Forty- 
three newspaper reporters accompanied the 
procession. The army encountered a snow¬ 
storm in crossing the Blue Ridge Moun¬ 
tains. A. few stragglers were arrested as 
vagrants and quarrels arose; but, on the 
whole, good order prevailed. Supplies 
were solicited or were tendered freely. 
General Coxey boasted that “not a chick¬ 
en was stolen.” The progress of the army 
was heralded widely by the reporters. Con¬ 
gress was nervous. The risings of the 
English, Wat the Tyler, and Jack Cade 
were brought to mind. The army reached 
Washington late in April. On the first 
of May the “Commonweal of Christ” 
marched solemnly to the Capitol steps 
amid an immense concourse of spectators. 
When General Coxey dismounted he and 
Mr. Carl Browne and a Mr. Jones were 
arrested for “trespassing on the grass.” 
The army went back to camp. The lead¬ 
ers were held for twenty days. The army 
disbanded by degrees. Other armies were 
organized, particularly in Chicago; but, 
with the coming of improved financial con¬ 
ditions, the movement came to an end. In 
1895 Coxey was the People’s Party can¬ 
didate for governor of Ohio, and polled 
52,000 votes. His party, however, grad¬ 
ually fell to pieces. 


Coyote, ki'6-te, or Prairie Wolf, a 

small, meager, yellowish wolf of the plains. 
It forms a burrow or den in the ground 
like the fox. Five to seven puppies come 
in May- Its natural food consists of sage 
hens, eggs, small birds, jackrabbits, and 
any other animal food it can find. It 
is a serious pest to the herdsmen, assailing 
calves and lambs, and even sheep in its 
hunger. It is rather wary about tak¬ 
ing poison, is too swift for hounds, and 
keeps out of gunshot. Its wail at night 
often terrifies intended victims. Mark 
Twain’s description cannot be improved: 

The coyote of the farther deserts is a long, 
slim, sick, and sorry-looking skeleton with a 
gray wolf skin stretched over it, a tolerably 
bushy tail that forever sags down with a de¬ 
spairing expression of forsakenness and misery, 
a furtive and evil eye, and a long, sharp face. 
He is always poor, out of luck, and friendless. 
He is so spiritless and cowardly that, even 
while his exposed teeth are pretending a threat, 
the rest of his face is apologizing for it. And he 
is so homely! So scrawny, and ribby, and coarse¬ 
haired, and pitiful! When he sees you he lifts 
his lip and lets a flash of his teeth out, and then 
he stops and takes a deliberate survey of you 
again; and, finally, the gray of his gliding 
body blends with the gray of the sage-brush, and 
he disappears. 


The Coyote was so proud that he determined 
to have a dance through heaven itself, having 
chosen as his partner a certain star that used to 
pass quite close by a mountain where he spent 
a good deal of his time. So he called out to the 
star to take him by the paw and they would go 
round the world together for a night; but the 
star only laughed, and winked in an excessively 
provoking way from time to time. The Coyote 
persisted angrily in his demand, and barked and 
barked at the star all round heaven, till 
the twinkling thing grew tired of his noise 
and told him to be quiet and he, should be taken 
next night. Next night the star came quite up 
close to the cliff where the Coyote stood, who 
leaping was able to catch on. Away they danced 
together through the blue heavens. Fine sport 
it was for a while; but oh, it grew bitter cold up 
there for a Coyote of the earth, and it was an 
awful sight to look down to where the broad 
Klamath lay like a slack bow-string and the 
Cahroc villages like arrow-heads. Woe for the 
Coyote ! his numb paws have slipped their hold 
on his bright companion ; dark is the partner that 
leads the dance now, and the name of him is 
Death. Ten long snows the Coyote is in falling, 
and when he strikes the earth he is smashed as 
flat as a willow-mat.—Coyotes must not dance 
with stars.—Robinson, Legend of California In¬ 
dians. 


I 



CRAB—CRABBE 


Crab, a popular name used to designate 
a large number of crustaceans—shellfish. 
The crabs are to be distinguished from lob¬ 
sters, crayfish, prawns, and shrimps by 
shortness of body. The abdomen or so- 
called tail of the body is reduced in size 
and is folded under the thorax, giving the 
body a broad, stout appearance. Crabs 
have stalk eyes and ten jointed legs. The 
front pair of legs is developed into large 
pincer-like claws. In the case of marine 
crabs one pair of legs takes the form of 
fin-like swimmerets. Crabs can scrabble 
over the sand in any direction, but they 
prefer to step sidewise. They have stout 
bodies covered with a firm shell, and look 
not unlike spiders in armor. There are 
many species not closely related. There 
are marine crabs and land crabs, swimming 
crabs and crawling crabs. There are large 
crabs and small crabs,—giant crabs, with 
arms so long that they open eighteen feet 
at the stretch, and peacrabs so small that 
they are able to live with the oyster in 
its shell. Some crabs live near the salt 
water; others live in it. Some species live 
on vegetable matter; other species, on 
snails, minnows, small shell-fish, and car¬ 
rion. Anything fleshy, dead or alive, they 
crowd into the stomach with their pincers. 
The stomach is furnished with horny pro¬ 
jections. It contracts and works like the 
gizzard of a chicken to crush and grind 
food. 

Crabs are great scavengers. At some sea¬ 
side resorts they render service in keeping 
the shore clean. Shoals of them come up 
at night and act as scavengers. Crabs are 
of many colors, blue, red, purple, and 
green. Some are phosphorescent. The blue 
crab is esteemed for food, and may be 
found in the markets of seaside cities. It 
is taken by letting a bit of meat down into 
the water by a string. The crab seizes the 
meat with its pincers and holds on tena¬ 
ciously until it is drawn to the surface, 
when it is an easy matter to take it with 
a landing net before it lets go. 

The sand crab has the color of sand, and 
hastens to bury itself to the eyes if a foot¬ 
step approaches. Where a seashore was 
glive with them a moment before, noth¬ 
ing can be seen by the stranger, though 

j 1-20 


many a pair of eyes are fixed upon him. 
The fiddler crab—not a true crab—fairly 
swarms along the shallow ditches of the 
Gulf States. It gets its name from one ab¬ 
normally large pincer and one abortive one, 
suggesting a fiddle and a bow. The her¬ 
mit crab, another distant relative, thrusts 
its soft tail into some empty shell for pro¬ 
tection. The larger it grows the larger 
the shell it needs, a truth so impressed on 
the hermit that it squabbles with its neigh¬ 
bors constantly. A large hermit has been 
known to force a dozen other hermits to 
allow him to try on their shells, only to 
go back to his own as the best after all. 

The land crabs of the West Indies hide 

4 

in holes in the daytime. At night they 
come out and pinch off the young shoots of 
the sugar-cane. They are so numerous that 
planters regard them as a serious pest. 

The largest crab known is the spider 
crab of Japan. Its scuttles about on the 
floor of the ocean 2,000 feet under 
water. It is said to have a spread of eight¬ 
een feet from claw to claw. 

See Crayfish. 

Crabapple, a close relative of the apple. 
There are not less than seventy species. 
The crabapple has handsome leaves and 
beautiful fragrant flowers. The hawthorn 
of the English poets—the pride of English 
hedgerows—is a crabapple. The “crabs” 
or crabapples of our orchards are merely 
small, hardy kinds of apples adapted to 
northern latitudes, and brought, several of 
them at least, from Siberia. It would save 
confusion if we could use the English 
word hawthorn for our small fruited trees 
that are not apples. See Apple ; Haw¬ 
thorn. 

Crabbe, krab, George (1754-1832), an 
English poet. He was born at Aldbor- 
ough, Suffolk. He was educated as a sur¬ 
geon, but, failing to get a living in his na¬ 
tive village, he went up to London. He 
was befriended by Edmund Burke, and 
finally turned clergyman. His later years 
were spent peacefully in the discharge of 
the duties of his parish at Trowbridge, 
Wiltshire. He was universally esteemed. 
His chief writings are The Village, The 
Parish Register, The Borough, and Tales 
of the Hall. Crabbe uses the two-rhymed 


CRACOW—CRANBERRY 


couplet in the greater number of his poems. 
His style lacks polish and musical rhythm. 
It is, however, direct and unaffected, and 
not without dramatic qualities. He de¬ 
scribes simple village life with truth and 
vigor, but shows the trials of the poor in 
harsher light than does Goldsmith in the 
Deserted Village. 

QUOTATIONS. 

Nor you, ye poor, of lettered scorn complain, 

To you, the smoothest song is smooth in vain ; 
O’ercome by labour, and bowed down by time, 
Feel you the barren flattery of a rhyme? 

Can poets soothe you, when you pine for bread, 

By winding myrtles round your ruin’d shed? 
Can their light tales your weighty griefs o’er- 
power. 

Or glad with airy mirth the toilsome hour? 

. —The Village. 

Books cannot always please, however good; 
Minds are not ever craving for their food. 

But ’t was a maxim he had often tried, 

That right was right, and there he would abide. 

He tried the luxury of doing good. 

SAID OF CRABBE. 

A Pope in worsted stockings.—Smith. 

Nature’s sternest painter, yet the best.—Byron. 
An admirable foil to the insincerity of the 
fashionable pastoral.—Courthope. 

Cracow, kra'ko, an ancient Polish city. 
It is situated on the Vistula, at the head 
of navigation. It was the capital of Po¬ 
land from 1320 to 1609. Even after the 
removal of the capital to Warsaw the 
kings were crowned here, just as the czar 
of Russia is crowned at Moscow. The 
cathedral, completed in 1359, is the burial 
place of the kings and the national heroes 
of the Polish people. The chapels are dec¬ 
orated with a number of fine monuments 
and notable works of sculpture, among oth¬ 
ers a Christ by Thorwaldsen. A silver 
shrine of St. Stanislaus, the patron saint 
of Poland, stands in the middle of the 
church. Other noted buildings are the 
Church of St. Mary, the Tuchhaus, or 
Cloth Hall, and the Museum. The Uni¬ 
versity of Cracow, in which Copernicus 
was a student, was founded in 1364. At 
the dismemberment of Poland it fell grad¬ 
ually into decay, but was reorganized in 
1817. It has a fine libary of 300,000 
volumes. A monument of Kosciusko, 120 
feet in height, stands on a hill near the 


city. Cracow is the metropolis of Austrian 
Poland. Population in 1907, 104,836, one- 
fifth of the number being Jews. 

Near Cracow is a most remarkable salt 
mine. It is a veritable underground world. 
The mine has been worked for a thousand 
years. Story after story has been ex¬ 
cavated, one beneath the other. Each floor 
rests on salt pillars rising from the floor 
below it. Visitors go down from floor to 
floor amid dazzling whiteness. A thousand 
men are employed. There are sixty-five 
miles of halls and galleries and twenty-two 
miles of tramways. Bags and barrels of salt 
are piled up in ricks, like those seen in 
a flouring mill. A village has been built 
underground. Men, women, and children, 
beasts of burden and domestic animals, 
live there generation after generation. A 
large chapel or church 100 feet high has 
been carved out of the salt. There are 
seats, pillars, an altar, and statues, all of 
glistening rock-salt. 

See Poland; Kosciusko. 

Craddock, Charles Egbert, the pen- 
name of Miss Mary Noailles Murfree, an 
American novelist. See Murfree, Mary 
Noailles. 

Cradle of Liberty. See Faneuil Hall. 

Craik, Dinah Maria Mulock (1826- 

1887), an English novelist and poet, com¬ 
monly known as Miss Mulock. Her first 
novel, The Ogilvies, was published in 1849. 
Her reputation was made, however, and 
is maintained by John Halifax, Gentleman, 
published in 1857. The story was circu¬ 
lated widely, and was translated into sev¬ 
eral languages. It is still popular. It is 
the touching, yet optimistic story of the 
simple life of a noble man. In all Mrs. 
Craik produced about twenty novels. A 
Brave Lady, A Noble Life, and Olive are 
among them. They are entertaining sto¬ 
ries of wholesome tone. Philip, My King, 
and Douglas, Tender and True, are two 
of Mrs. Craik’s poems which one desires 
to know. The latter has been set to mu¬ 
sic, and at one time had great popularity. 

Crake. See Rail. 

Cranberry, a creeping member of the 
heath family, closely allied to the winter- 
green and blueberry. The large or Amer¬ 
ican cranberry trails its thread-like vines 


CRANE 


over wet peat bogs from North Carolina 
to Minnesota and northeastward. Its oval 
leaves are evergreen. The red, solid, cher¬ 
ry-like berries weight their slender pedi¬ 
cels over into the moss in so perfect an 
arch as to suggest the name crane—or 
cranberry. Stewed cranberries are a favor¬ 
ite fruit on an American table. Turkey 
with cranberry sauce has become quite as 
indispensable a Thanksgiving adjunct as 
the traditional Christmas goose and apple 
sauce of England. The use of cranberries 
is not so well understood in England. A 
gentleman, acknowledging the receipt of 
a barrel sent by an American friend as a 
present, stated that the fruit arrived very 
fine in appearance, but that it had evident¬ 
ly soured on the way over. 

An ideal place for raising cranberries is 
a natural cranberry marsh, with a supply of 
water brought under control by a system of 
dams and ditches so that the vines may 
be flooded to save the flowers from a late 
frost in spring, or the young fruit from an 
early frost in autumn, and yet so under con¬ 
trol that the marsh may be dried out for 
planting and picking. It is often desirable 
also to flood the plants against an attack 
from insects. When possible, a reservoir, 
like a mill pond, is constructed at the head 
of the marsh. A flooded marsh looks like 
a lake. 

New Jersey, Cape Cod, and Wisconsin 
are the centers of cranberry production. 
Large tracts, once deemed worthless, now 
yield handsome incomes. Wild cranber¬ 
ries are shipped from Nova Scotia to Bos¬ 
ton. The Cape Cod growers, who appear 
to have gone about the business most thor¬ 
oughly, consider an expense of $200 to 
$400 an acre desirable. The swamp is 
first cleared of loose moss, sticks, and 
stumps, pared to an even surface; then 
covered with four inches of sand. Cut¬ 
tings —bits of runners six inches long— 
are dropped in rows and pressed into the 
sand obliquely, so that about an inch is 
above the surface. The field is kept clear 
of weeds by hand picking. A marsh is 
expected to come into full bearing in three 
or four years. 

In time of emergency, as before an ex¬ 
pected frost, or when old vines have about 


outlived their usefulness, a picker, made 
after the fashion of a scoop, with a bottom 
toothed like a comb, is used; but ordinarily 
cranberries are picked by hand at an ex¬ 
pense of fifty cents a bushel. Men, wom¬ 
en, and children come from a distance 
during the cranberry harvest to pick the 
berries. Fifty bushels an acre is a fair 
yield, which has been crowded up to 200 
bushels. Growers expect $4.50 to $6.00 
a barrel, though a price of 50 cents a 
bushel is recorded for May, 1894. The 
cranberry crop of the United States for 
1910 was 1,195,000 bushels. The area of 
cultivation is increasing. In 1910 New. 
Jersey was reported to have an area of 
9,000 acres planted to cranberries; Massa¬ 
chusetts, 6,200; Wisconsin, 1,700 acres. 
Michigan, Maine and Connecticut follow in 
the order named. 

See Blueberry. 

Crane, a wading bird, classified near 
the heron. There are three North Amer¬ 
ican species. The whooping crane is fifty 
inches in length. The plumage is white, 
save that the tip of the head and the sides 
of the neck are red, and the wing coverts 
black. It bred formerly from Illinois 
northward in unfrequented places, and 
wintered in the Gulf States. The whoop¬ 
ing cranes migrated in single file with out¬ 
stretched legs and neck. This species is 
practically extinct. The sandhill or brown 
crane of somewhat more southern range 
is a brownish gray bird, forty inches in 
length. It is noted for its antics in the 
breeding season, which have been likened 
aptly to an Indian war dance. In pio¬ 
neer days the sandhill crane was so nu¬ 
merous and so familiar from Nebraska to 
Minnesota as to dispute the possession of 
the autumn stubble fields with the tur¬ 
keys, but the most courageous “gob¬ 
bler” was glad to retire before the power¬ 
ful wing and sharp beak of the crane. 
There is also a third American species 
known as the little brown crane. It ranges 
from Alaska to Mexico. See Heron. 

Whenever the days are cool and clear, 

The sandhill crane goes walking 
Across the field by the flashing weir, 

Slowly, solemnly stalking. 

The little frogs in the tules hear, 

And jump for their lives if he comes near; 


CRANE—CRANMER 


The fishes scuttle away in fear 

When the sandhill crane goes walking. 

The field folk know if he comes that way, 
Slowly, solemnly stalking, 

There is danger and death in the least delay, 
When the sandhill crane goes walking. 
The chipmunks stop in the midst of play; 

The gophers hide in their holes away; 

And “Hush, oh hush!” the field-mice say, 

When the sandhill crane goes walking. 

—Mrs. Mary Austin, in St. Nicholas. 

Crane, a mechanism for raising heavy 
weights, transporting them limited dis¬ 
tances and lowering them into desired 
positions. When used for lifting only, it 
is often called a derrick. The common 
form has a tall, upright shaft, set in a 
socket at the base with an oblique arm hav¬ 
ing a pulley in the upper and outer end. 
The weight may be raised by a crank on 
the shaft, which is then revolved till the 
object is over its desired position, when it 
may be lowered. It has a wide use in 
quarries, machine-shops, etc., the traveling 
crane, however, becoming more common in 
the latter. In this device the apparatus is 
mounted upon a track or trestle and is 
operated by an engine or motor. When it 
is iron that is to be lifted, powerful electro¬ 
magnets are utilized. 

Cranefly, a mosquito-like fly. It is often 
mistaken for an overgrown mosquito. De¬ 
spite its long legs and wings, the cranefly 
is a stumbling walker and a poor flyer. Its 
natural home is in meadows. Its eggs are 
deposited in the ground. The second pair 
of wings is reduced to club-like append¬ 
ages. Chambers states that the cranefly 
of England is called Peter-long-legs and 
that its larvae do serious damage to the 
roots of growing crops. Anyone who has 
watched the cranefly try to take care of 
six long legs at once can sympathize with 
the distressed owner. • 

My six long legs, all here, all there, 
Oppress my bosom with despair. 

Crane’s Bill. See Geranium. 

Cranes of Ibycus. See Ibycus. 

Cranford, a story by Mrs. Elizabeth 
Gaskell, published in 1853. This little 
book is a charming picture of quiet life in 
an English village. The people, particu¬ 
larly the women of this village, are de¬ 
scribed by Mary Smith, an observing young 


person from a nearby town. The women 
of Cranford scorn the “vulgarity of 
wealth,” and practice “elegant economy.” 
The story is full of a quaint and al¬ 
most pathetic humor. Its popularity seems 
to increase, and it is already counted as a 
classic. In recent years two American 
women have produced books which may be 
compared with Cranford and not suffer by 
the comparison: Old Chester Tales by 
Mrs. Deland, and Friendship Village by 
Zona Gale. The following is from Cran¬ 
ford: 

For keeping the trim gardens full of choice 
flowers without a weed to speck them; for fright¬ 
ening away little boys who look wistfully at the 
said flowers through the railings; for rushing out 
at the geese that occasionally venture into the 
gardens if the gates are left open ; for deciding 
all questions of literature and politics without 
troubling themselves with unnecessary reasons or 
arguments; for obtaining clear and correct knowl¬ 
edge of everybody’s affairs in the parish; for 
keeping their neat maid-servants in admirable 
order; for kindness (somewhat dictatorial) to the 
poor, and real tender good offices to each other 
whenever they are in distress,—the ladies of 
Cranford are quite sufficient. 

“A man,” as one of them observed to me 
once, “is so in the way in the house!” 

See Gaskell, Mrs. Elizabeth. 

Cranmer, Thomas (1489-1556), the 
first Protestant archbishop of Canterbury. 
A scion of an old Norman family. As a 
boy he was fond of hunting and riding. 
At Cambridge University Cranmer was 
skilled in the learned languages and in the 
Scriptures. In 1523 he was appointed a 
lecturer on theology. In 1528 Henry 
VIII desired a divorce from Catherine, 
the first of his six wives. Hearing that 
Cranmer had suggested that the case be 
tried, not before the Pope, but be “tried 
according to the word of God,” Henry 
was so delighted that he asked, “Who is 
this Dr. Cranmer? Marry, I trow he hath 
the right sow by the ear.” From this 
time on, Cranmer was Henry’s right hand 
adviser. He was made a royal chaplain, 
and was sent on a mission to Rome and 
to the emperor. He married Henry to 
Anne Boleyn, and helped him get rid of 
both her and his fourth wife. Cranmer 
was active in furthering the English ref¬ 
ormation and in pulling down the mon¬ 
asteries. An edition of the Scriptures is 


CRAPE—CRAWFORD 


known as Cranmer’s Bible. Whenever 
the English people showed signs of going 
back to Catholicism, Cranmer stood for 
the new church. Under his influence pic¬ 
tures and images were ordered out of the 
churches. Communion was made to take 
the place of mass. An English book of 
common prayer took the place of the mis¬ 
sal and breviary in use. When Henry’s 
death and the short reign of Edward 
brought Mary, the Catholic daughter of 
Catherine to the throne, and Cranmer into 
the power of his old foes, it is small won¬ 
der that he was arrested and tried on charge 
of heresy. In hope of saving his life 
Cranmer signed six recantations, that is, 
took back all he had ever said or done 
against Catholicism; but his enemies could 
not be appeased so easily. March 21, 1556, 
Cranmer was haled from the gaol of Ox¬ 
ford, taken to church to hear his own fu¬ 
neral sermon, and was burned alive at the 
stake in front of one of the university 
buildings. 

Crape, krap, a fabric of silk, wool, or 
cotton whose surface is crinkled by small, 
irregular ridges or puckers. In making 
silk crape a hard twisted thread is used 
for the weft, and sometimes for both warp 
and weft. A group of wefts is woven 
into the warp; then another group the 
threads of which are twisted in the reverse 
direction. The threads are woven with 
more or less space between them; when 
removed from the loom they untwist, each 
in its own direction. In making the best 
qualities of crape both warp and weft 
threads are twisted. This gives elasticity 
to the fabric in both directions. When only 
weft threads are twisted the elasticity is 
only from side to side. The crinkled sur¬ 
face of crape reflects little light, and thus 
permits color to be seen to advantage. Silk 
crapes in rich colors have special beauty. 
They are used for evening gowns, neck 
scarfs and similar purposes. 

English mourning crape is given its elas¬ 
ticity and crinkled surface, not by weaving, 
but by a process of pressing between ridged 
and crisped rollers. Japanese silk crape, 
one of Japan’s most notable textiles, is 
produced by a process similar to that em¬ 
ployed in the manufacture of American 


crape. The weft threads are twisted in two 
directions. The web, however, is boiled 
after removal from the loom. It is then 
washed, rolled, stretched, and dried in the 
sun. The result is a soft, clinging, rich, 
and beautiful fabric. 

Cotton and wool crapes are produced 
by similar methods. A paper, having the 
crinkled appearance and elastic qualities 
of the cloth of that name, is called crape 
■ paper. The name crape is the English 
spelling of a French word, signifying crisp 
or wavy. 

Crash, a coarse, inexpensive, plain- 
woven linen fabric used for toweling. It 
is woven usually in narrow widths. It may 
be bleached, but is sold frequently in the 
natural color. A smoothly woven quality 
is used for summer suits by both men and 
women, and is called crash suiting. 

Crater. See Volcano. 

Cravanette, cra-ve-net', a closely wov¬ 
en, fine twilled, worsted cloth, used large¬ 
ly for men’s summer coats and vests. A 
light weight of fine quality is used for 
women’s suits and dresses. Cravanette, 
made waterproof by a special process, is 
used for mackintoshes and raincoats. The 
uniforms worn by the Salvation Army and 
the Volunteers of America are made of 
this waterproof cravanette. 

Crawford, Francis Marion (1854- 
1909), an American novelist. He was born 
in Italy. His father, Thomas Crawford, 
was an American sculptor. Young Craw¬ 
ford was educated at Concord, New Hamp¬ 
shire, and at Cambridge, England. He 
also studied at Heidelberg and Rome, ac¬ 
quiring a wide knowledge of languages 
and their respective literatures. He was 
for two years the editor of a paper at 
Allahabad, India. He married the daugh¬ 
ter of General Berdan, U. S. A., in 1884, 
and settled in a permanent home near Sor¬ 
rento, Italy. He joined the Catholic 
church. He died in April, 1909. 

Mr. Crawford was a hard worker. His 
efforts were confined principally to the 
writing of novels, though he did some work 
in critical philosophv and philology and 
wrote one play, Francesca di Rimini, which 
Sarah Bernhardt produced in Paris in 
1902. Many of his works have been trans- 


CRAYFISH 


lated into foreign languages, and, as a 
mark of recognition of his ability, the 
French government bestowed upon him 
the Monbrun prize and a gold medal. 

In twenty-eight years Mr. Crawford 
produced forty novels and historical works. 
He is believed to have reached a larger 
public than any other American novelist 
for fifty years. It is interesting to know 
that in a little book entitled, The Novel, 
What Is It? Mr. Crawford has expressed 
his own views as to what a perfect novel 
should be. He does not believe in the 
“novel with a purpose,” but thinks a novel 
should be an “intellectual, artistic luxury.” 
Fie says it must be “clean and sweet, for 
it must tell its tale to all mankind. . . . 
Its romance must be of the human heart 
and truly human, that is, of the earth as 
we have found it. Its idealism must be 
transcendent, not measured to man’s mind, 
but proportioned to man’s soul.” Thus 
he suggests that union of the real and the 
ideal, which we find exemplified in so many 
of his stories. Of Crawford’s novels, Mr. 
Isaacs was the earliest and is intensely 
interesting. It is a romantic tale, involving 
the occult. The series, Saracinesca, Sant’ 
Ilario, and Don Orsino, dealing with Ital¬ 
ian life among the nobility, is doubtless 
his strongest and finest work. Others are 
Casa Braccio, which Crawford himself 
considered his best, Zoroaster, A Roman 
Singer, The Children of the King, In the 
Palace of the King, and Via Crucis. Ave 
Roma Immortalis is a history of Rome 
which reads like a novel. 

Crawford is the most versatile and various of 
modern novelists.—Andrew Lang. 

When Crawford first “found himself” as a 
writer of fiction at the age of twenty-eight, the 
result was like the rush of an artesian well when 
rock is pierced, and one book followed another 
in rapid succession. Those who think that he 
forced himself to write are mistaken; the writ¬ 
ing forced him. When he was at work on a 
novel he was possessed by it—he heard the char¬ 
acters speak and saw them move, and they were 
as real to him for the time as living men and 
women. No novelist who has written many books 
is alwavs at his best—there would be no “best” 
if that were so—but Marion Crawford, from 
first to last, gave all that was in him to his work, 
and a proof of its high average is that half a 
dozen people will often give as many different 
opinions as to which is his “best book.” 


To those who knew Crawford well no such 
presence will ever come again. His devotion to 
his family and to those friends outside it whom 
he loved; his high sense of honour, his absence 
of vanity, his simplicity of nature, and his gen¬ 
erosity of thought and deed combined to make 
him a companion who was always desired. It 
may truly be said that much as he gave the 
world, he left it nothing so good as what died 
with him. 

Crayfish, a familiar fresh-water relative 
of the lobster and the crab. The crayfish 
crawls about at night on four pairs of legs, 
either forward, sidewise, or backward, ex¬ 
amining muddy bottoms for worms, larvae, 
snails, etc. The huge pincers, or modified 
fifth pair of legs which he carries, are use¬ 
ful in crushing weak shells and in tearing 
food into pieces. When alarmed he brings 
his fan-shaped tail under his body with a 
vigorous swoop that causes his body to dart 
backward with great swiftness. A repeti¬ 
tion of the movement and the raising of 
all the mud he can are his means of escape 
from the prowling fishes that would gladly 
give him a nightly shelter. When water is 
low and his mudflat is exposed the crayfish 
sinks a well which he constantly deepens 
as the waters recede, heaping up a ring 
of marble shaped pellets about the entrance. 
It is said that a hungry raccoon inserts his 
paw in the burrow and churns the water 
up and down. When the crayfish comes 
up to see what the commotion signifies, 
the wily coon flips him out, and the bur¬ 
row is ready for another occupant. At all 
events, boys in search of “crawfish” bait 
run an arm up and down in the burrow, 
churning up mud. A pair of fingers is 
held in the muddy water at one side of the 
burrow until first a pair of feelers, and 
then a pair of stalked eyes appear cau¬ 
tiously at the surface. A quick motion at 
the critical moment and the crayfish is 
out. Otherwise, once he sees the bait- 
catcher, a flip of his tail takes him down 
to stay down till times are more propitious. 

The crayfish is hatched from an egg, 
and is several years in attaining his full 
growth. Whenever his shell becomes too 
small, which occurs several times the first 
year, he molts it and grows a new one. 

Crayfish are common in North America 
and in Europe, Madagascar, Australia, and 
Japan, but are found seldom in Asia and 



Waterlouse 


Crayfish 


Cephalothorax of crayfish, uncovered 


Freshwater shrimp 


Diastylis 


Woodlouse 


Shrimp 


CRAYFISH AND RELATIVES. 






















CRAYON—CREEKS 


South America and not at all in Africa. 
The shores of New England are too rocky 
to favor crayfish. On the lower Missis¬ 
sippi, they cause great damage by perforat¬ 
ing the dikes or levees, and giving the surg¬ 
ing floods a start at breaking through. 

See Crab. 

Crayon. See Chalk. 

Crayon, Geoffrey, jef'fry kra'un, a 
pseudonym of Washington Irving, over 
which he published the Sketch Book and 
other writings. In Irving’s complete works, 
one volume is entitled Crayon Miscellany. 
See Irving, Washington. 

Cream of Tartar, tar'ter, a white crys¬ 
talline powder composed of tartaric acid 
and potassium. It is obtained from the 
lees, that is to say, the sediment or dregs 
of wine. It is valuable not only in medi¬ 
cine, but as the essential element of the 
best baking powder. Efforts have been 
made to manufacture the drug direct from 
the juice of the grape. A California asso¬ 
ciation has offered a prize of $25,000 to the 
scientist who shall make known a method 
of manufacturing cream of tartar from the 
juice of the grape, without going through 
the intermediate process of wine making 
and settling. Such a discovery would give 
additional value to the grape crop of that 
state, as well as decrease the price of an 
expensive household necessity. See Bread. 

Creamery. See Butter. 

Crecy, or Cressy, kres'si, a village in 
the northeastern part of France. It is noted 
for a famous battle, August 26, 1346, in 
which Edward III of England with an 
army of 40,000 men defeated the flower 
of the French chivalry. This battle is re¬ 
puted as the first in which cannon were 
used by English troops, “which, with fire 
threw little iron balls to frighten the 
horses.” This battle is significant also 
in that English yeomen armed with the 
bow gained a victory over gentlemen in 
armor. The battle of Crecy has been 
termed the death knfll of feudalism—the 
beginning of the rise of the common people 
in England and France. Not only were 
1,200 French knights left dead on the field 
of battle, but the usefulness of heavy ar¬ 
mor—the possession, the dependence, and 
the defense of the wealthy and the noble— 


was past. “The churl had struck down the 
noble,” says Green. In this battle the 
king’s eldest son, Edward the Black Prince, 
of whom we hear in English history, won 
great renown for bravery. See Black 
Prince. 

Credit Mobilier, mo-be'lier, in United 
States history, a corporation chartered to 
build railways. It was an early instance 
of graft on a large scale. The company 
was formed in Pennsylvania in 1863 with 
a capital of $2,500,000. The name adopted 
was that of a former French banking com¬ 
pany with a somewhat similar history. In 
1867 the stock was increased to $3,750,- 
000, and the company undertook the build- 
. ing of the Union Pacific Railroad. For a 
few years enormous dividends were paid 
and the stock rose rapidly in value. When 
the exposure came if was found that many 
honored members of Congress—men who 
had voted large national bonuses to assist 
in building the railroad—were stockhold¬ 
ers in the Credit Mobilier, and that the 
company had received outrageous prices for 
its work. In other words, the organizers 
of the Credit Mobilier gave stock to sena¬ 
tors and representatives in exchange for 
votes that granted the Union Pacific securi¬ 
ties wherewith to pay three prices for the 
building of the road. A committee of the 
Senate recommended the expulsion of one 
member; but no action was taken. A com¬ 
mittee of the Plouse recommended the ex¬ 
pulsion of two members; but the House 
contented itself with votes of censure. A 
number of congressmen were, however, re¬ 
tired from public life; and a connection 
with this scandal (probably innocent for 
the most part) cost James G. Blaine the 
election to the presidency. 

Creek. See Americanism. 

Creeks, kreks, a tribe of American 
Indians. They are related to the Semi- 
noles and Cherokees, as well as to the Choc¬ 
taws and Chickasaws. At their height 
they numbered from 20,000 to 30,000. 
They occupied the greater part of Ala¬ 
bama and Georgia. They cultivated gar¬ 
dens and fields of corn, dressed comfort¬ 
ably, and lived in log houses plastered 
with clay. Their villages were along the 
streams. They were skillful in the man- 


CREEPER—CREMATION 


agement of dugout canoes, and in hunting 
and fishing. Their influence was courted 
by the English and by the Spanish authori¬ 
ties on the Gulf. They aided the forces 
of Cornwallis during the Revolution, and 
at its close afforded a harbor for Tory ref¬ 
ugees driven from the southern colonies. 
During the War of 1812 a band fell on 
Ft. Mimms near Mobile and massacred 
500 men, women, and children. The en¬ 
tire nation was punished severely in the 
battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814. Two 
thousand warriors were slain. In 1825-28 
their lands were taken by the United States. 
In 1836 about 25,000 Creeks were trans¬ 
ported to Indian Territory, where they 
settled with their slaves, and still form 
one of the Indian nations. During the 
Civil War they divided. About 1,000 en¬ 
listed in the Union army. The Confeder¬ 
ate section drove the others out of the ter¬ 
ritory. The number has been increased 
by whites and negroes to 40,000, but the 
Creeks proper number about 8,000. A 
few hundred escaped from the troops at 
the time of the removal, and still linger 
in their native mountains, trapping, hunt¬ 
ing, fishing, raising patches of corn, and 
acting as guides for white hunters. See 
Indian Territory. 

Creeper, in American ornithology, a 
small bird six inches long, with white 
under parts and upper parts of mixed col¬ 
ors, giving the general impression of brown. 
The brown creeper breeds from Maine and 
Minnesota northward, hiding its nest in 
a hole or behind a piece of loosened bark. 
It has a stiff tail which it uses, woodpeck¬ 
er-fashion, as a prop in climbing. It may 
be seen examining the bark of trees, an 
occupation well described by Chapman. 

The patient, plodding brown creeper is search¬ 
ing for the insects, eggs, and larvae which are 
hidden in crevices in the bark; after watching 
him for several minutes one becomes impressed 
with the thought that he has lost the only thing 
in the world he ever cared for, and that his one 
object in life is to find it. Ignoring you com¬ 
pletely, with scarcely a pause, he winds his way 
in a preoccupied, near-sighted manner up a tree 
trunk. Having finally reached the top of his 
spiral staircase, one might suppose he would 
rest long enough to survey his surroundings, but, 
like a bit of loosened bark, he drops off to the 
base of the nearest tree and resumes his never- 
ending task. 


Cremation, the process of burning, or 

reducing to ashes the bodies of the dead. 
Doubtless this method of disposal of dead 
bodies was prevalent in prehistoric times. 
Ancient graves have been found in many 
places which contain no bones, but instead 
there are urns holding funeral ashes. Pre¬ 
vious to the time of Christ cremation was 
the general practice among civilized na¬ 
tions, with the exception of the Egyptians, 
who embalmed the bodies of their dead, the 
Jews who. laid them in sepulchers, and the 
Chinese who buried them in the ground. 
That burial came to be almost a universal 
custom was due, probably, to several causes, 
chief among which was the belief in the 
resurrection of the body. Cremation, for 
sanitary reasons, began to be urged as early 
as the seventeenth century, but not until the 
latter part of the nineteenth century did the 
matter receive much attention either in 
Europe or America. Many eminent physi¬ 
cians published their views on the necessity 
of cremation as a safeguard to public 
health, especially in densely populated dis¬ 
tricts. Thus the idea gained ground. In 
1876 a semi-private crematorium was erect¬ 
ed in Washington, Pennsylvania. The first 
public crematorium in the United States 
was opened in New York City in 1881. 

Although the process varies as to de¬ 
tails, that employed at this New York 
crematorium will give a fair idea of the 
usual custom. The body, removed from 
the casket which is burned separately, is 
wrapped in an alum-soaked sheet and 
placed in a retort, which is then subjected 
for several hours to extreme heat. The 
bone ash, which by reason of its greater 
weight, is separated readily from the ashes 
of the clothing, is gathered and sealed in a 
canister. A chapel at the crematorium may 
be used for funeral services if desired. 

At the close of the year 1900 there were 
in the United States twenty-four crematori¬ 
ums at which 13,281 bodies had been cre¬ 
mated. The objection to cremation, despite 
the statements of physicians as to its neces¬ 
sity, seems to be strong. It is, however, a 
matter of sentiment which can have no 
foundation of sufficient strength to stand 
against the needs of protecting the health 
of the living. The time is not far distant, 


CREMONA—CREPON 


probably, when cremation will have become 
a universal custom. 

Cremona, kre-mo'na, a city on the 
northern bank of the Po, famous in the 
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for the 
making of violins. In fact the violin ac¬ 
quired its present shape and its highest 
quality of excellence at Cremona. Among 
the noted makers were Stradivarius and 
Amati, the latter being the name of a fam¬ 
ily rather than an individual. A genuine 
old “Cremona” is exceedingly valuable on 
I account of its rarity, and commands a high 
price. The modern city has a population 
of 30,000 people and is the seat of con¬ 
siderable local trade. It boasts one of the 
finest towers in Italy, nearly 400 feet in 
height, commanding an extensive view of 
the fertile plains of the Po. There are 
manufactures of silk, earthenware, and of 
mustard. See Violin. 

Creole, kre'ol, in Louisiana, a name ap¬ 
plied to pure white people born in this 
country, but of French ancestry. The 
term is also applied, but less frequently, 
to those of Spanish blood. They are dis¬ 
tinguished as French creoles and Spanish 
creoles. In a country where there are 
many people of mixed blood, the term is 
one of honor, conferring social standing. 
In the West Indies the creole is one of 
pure Spanish ancestry, as distinguished 
from the people of mixed blood and immi¬ 
grants from other European countries. The 
term is also applied, but improperly, to a 
negro born in this country, as distinguished 
from those imported from Africa. Taken 
without modification, a Louisiana creole is 
a person of pure French ancestry born in 
this country. The traditions, aristocratic 
customs, and family pride of genuine cre¬ 
ole society are well described by G. W. 
Cable in his Old Creole Days, The Grand- 
issimes, The Creoles of Louisiana, and 
other volumes. 

Creole State. See Louisiana. 

Creosote, kre'6-sot, a substance having 
the general appearance and qualities of 
carbolic acid. Creosote was prepared first 
from coal tar by repeated treatment with 
potash and acids, followed by distillation. 
It rises from the tar at a high tempera¬ 
ture, 400° to 760° F. It is obtained also 


by the destructive distillation of wood. Pure 
creosote is an oily, heavy, colorless liquid. 
It refracts light powerfully. It has a 
sweet, burning taste and smells like a 
smoked ham. The word is from the Greek 
meaning flesh preserver. It is one of the 
strongest preservative agents known. Meat 
dipped in a one per cent solution of creo¬ 
sote is safer from spoiling than if smoked. 

Creosote water is used in medicine. It 
stimulates digestion and kills bacteria in 
the intestines. Creosote vapor is inhaled 
with helpful effect by consumptives, and 
by patients afflicted with bronchitis. Severe 
cases of nausea are sometimes relieved by 
creosote. Though less dangerous than car¬ 
bolic acid, creosote should be used as a 
remedy only under competent advice. Cre¬ 
osote is added to whiskey to give the desired 
flavor of reeking peat, much as though 
the whiskey had been distilled over a smok¬ 
ing peat fire. 

Creosote is an excellent preservative of 
wood. By killing germs of decay it pre¬ 
vents dry rot; posts dipped in hot creosote 
last longer. In this respect the action is 
like that of tar. Owing to the advancing 
price of railroad ties treatment with creo¬ 
sote has been employed with excellent re¬ 
sults. The life of a wooden pavement 
may be tripled by the use of creosote. The 
blocks are placed in a cylindrical steel 
drum; the air is first exhausted by an air- 
pump causing the vapors of the wood to 
pass off by expansion; creosote oil, boiling 
hot, is then introduced. By tumbling the 
blocks awhile in the drum, they are so im¬ 
pregnated with creosote that they become 
practically rot-proof. It is claimed that a 
pavement of creosoted blocks, well laid in 
boiling tar and gravel on a concrete foun¬ 
dation, will outwear and outlast several 
ordinary wooden pavements. The treat¬ 
ment of ties is not essentially different. 

Crepe Lisse, krap lees, a thin, gauzy 
silk fabric, plain woven, and stiffened in 
finishing with sizing. Sometimes it is 
crimped to imitate real crape. It is used 
for ruchings, trimmings, and millinery pur¬ 
poses. 

Crepon, kra-por', a name signifying 
coarse crape, applied to several articles of 
worsted fabrics made in imitation of real 


CRESCENT—CRETE 


crape. The crinkled effect of crepon is 
produced by the Jacquard loom. Two sets 
of warp threads are used, the one having 
greater tension than the other. The lower 
set, which is sometimes of cotton, forms 
the foundation of the fabric. The upper set 
forms the face and is of silk, wool, or 
mohair. The Jacquard loom is so arranged 
that certain warp threads are skipped in 
the weaving to form a pattern. The varied 
effects produced are described as pebbled, 
cockled, dimpled, souffle, brocaded, blis¬ 
tered, etc. The fabric is dyed and finished 
with as little stretching as possible, that 
the crinkle effect may not be lessened. The 
material is sometimes silk striped, some¬ 
times embroidered with silk on the Swiss 
embroidery machine. Crepons are classed 
frequently as “novelty goods.” Cotton 
crepon is woven of yarns which have been 
mercerized and then protected by gum or 
some gelatinous substance from the action 
of caustic soda. These yarns are used in 
combination with others not so protected. 
The fabric is then treated with a solution 
of caustic soda which shrinks the unpro¬ 
tected yarns, producing a crinkled effect. 
See Mercerizing. 

Crescent, the moon in its first quarter, 
—the new moon. The word is Latin, 
meaning increasing, and has no reference 
to shape. It was applied to the new moon 
as growing, increasing; but the name has 
been transferred from the growth to the 
curved shape, the thick body, and tapering < 
horns of the young moon, and, inappropri¬ 
ately, to the last quarter, when the lighted 
portion of the moon is indeed sickle 
shaped, but is waning instead of waxing. 
The Egyptian and the Greek worshipers 
of the moon decorated their goddesses, Isis 
and Silene, with the crescent. Athenian 
citizens of illustrious birth were permitted 
to wear crescents of silver and ivory on 
their buskins as insignia of rank. The 
patricians of Rome claimed a similar priv¬ 
ilege. The crescent was adopted by the 
Roman empire as the symbol of growing 
power and eternal dominion. The crescent 
was favored in the eastern cities, as at By¬ 
zantium, possibly by way of distinction 
from the Roman eagle, the military em¬ 
blem particularly of Rome and the western 


empire. The Turks appear to have 
adopted the crescent after they took Con¬ 
stantinople. Since that date the crescent 
has been the emblem of Islam, as the cross 
is the emblem of Christianity. New Or¬ 
leans, built around a bend of the Missis¬ 
sippi river, is on that account called “The 
Crescent City.” 

Crescent City, a popular name for the 
city of New Orleans. 

Crete, kret, the most important island 
in the Greek Empire. The inhabitants 
are chiefly Greeks. It is situated in the 
eastern Mediterranean, eighty-one miles 
south of Greece. It is 160 miles long and 
from 7 to 35 miles broad. Area, 3,326 
square miles. The highest peak attains 
8,060 feet in altitude. It is a country of 
valleys and springs, luxurious vegetation, 
and a mild climate. The present inhabit¬ 
ants are engaged largely in the raising 
of goats and in producing olives, olive oil, 
soap, wool, fish, figs, acorns, wine, wheat, 
oranges, lemons, silk, and honey. The ordi¬ 
nary yield of olive oil is 10,000,000 gal¬ 
lons. In 1821 Crete rose with the rest of 
the Greeks, but did not obtain indepen¬ 
dence. In 1868 and again in 1896, there 
were uprisings. Crete had been in an up¬ 
roar for seventy years. Great Britain, 
Russia, France, and Italy intervened; as a 
result of which semi-independence was 
granted the Cretans. They were tributary 
nominally to Turkey, but they had a na¬ 
tional assembly and a regular constitution. 
In 1908 Crete took advantage of the dis¬ 
turbance in Turkey and proclaimed a union 
with Greece. The four powers intervened 
again, however. A combined fleet required 
the Cretans to haul down the Greek flag. 

Agitation for annexation to Greece con¬ 
tinued, however, and in October, 1912, 
Cretan deputies were admitted to the Greek 
parliament, and in November, 1913, Crete 
was formally annexed to Greece. This 
was soon after recognized by the Powers. 

The population of Crete in 1911 was 
342,151. Of these about seven-eighths 
were members of the Greek Church. The 
rest of the people, with the exception of 
a few Jews and foreigners, are Moham¬ 
medans. There are about 3,500 Greek 
churches and chapels and about fifty-five 


CREUSA—CRIMEA 


Mohammedan mosques. All of the inhab¬ 
itants of the island speak Greek. Canea, 
the capital, had in 1911 about 25,000 in¬ 
habitants. 

In Greek mythology, Crete is the alleged 
scene of many of the adventures of the 
gods and heroes. Saturn reigned here. 
Minos, who built the fabled labyrinth, 
dwelt in Crete. The ancient world derived 
its supply of chalk from Crete, whence 
the name Cretan earth. 

Creusa, cre-u'sa. See Aeneas. 

Cricket, an insect closely related to the 
grasshopper and locust. The old English 
name is grig, whence the proverbial ex¬ 
pression, “as merry as a grig.” The back 
is flat. The wing covers bend squarely 
down over the sides of the abdomen. The 
antennae are long. “Black, glossy crick¬ 
ets,” says Holmes, “with their long fila¬ 
ments sticking out like whips of four- 
horse stage coaches.” The characteristic 
noise or chirp is made by the male by rais¬ 
ing his wing covers and rasping one on 
the other. An examination of a male 
cricket shows that ridges and rasping edges, 
used like a fiddle and bow, are admirably 
and ingeniously adapted to produce chirps 
at the player’s pleasure. Crickets, like 
grasshoppers, lay their eggs in pockets in 
the earth to hatch the following spring. 
In grain-producing regions crickets some¬ 
times infest grain shocks and do not a little 
damage, especially by way of cutting bands. 
They get into clothing also, and cut holes. 
If a coat be left on the stubble over night, 
it is likely to be riddled. Crickets have 
an active, cheerful way that has made them 
a place in literature and in the regard of 
households, well expressed in Dickens’ 
Cricket on the Hearth . The following is 
a more juvenile view: 

Old Dame Cricket, 

Down in a thicket, 

Brought up her children nine— 

Queer little chaps, 

In glossy black caps 
And brown little suits so fine. 

In olden times the Florentines kept 
crickets in cages for good luck. The cus¬ 
tom still prevails, it is said, in some parts 
of Japan. See Cicada; Grasshopper; 
Locust ; Katydid. 


Cricket, the national ball game of Eng¬ 
land. The term is probably related to 
“crooked,” in reference to the shape of the 
crooked hockey-like bats with which the 
game was formerly played. The regular 
match game is played by two elevens. At 
one time a game of the village green and 
of the school, cricket has become as pro¬ 
fessional as baseball in this country. 
Games are played by clubs in circuits, with 
immense crowds in attendance. As com¬ 
pared with baseball the game is played 
with two wickets instead of four bases. 
The pitcher is called a bowler. The bowler 
aims to knock down the wicket behind the 
batsman. A run is made from a wicket 
to the bowler’s crease in front of the other 
wicket. Thomas Hughes’ Tom Brown at 
Rugby gives a stirring picture of a cricket 
match. American boys consider the game 
a trifle tame in comparison with baseball. 
See Baseball. 

Crime, an act or an omission punishable 
by l^.w. An offense, however repugnant to 
a sense of right and wrong, is not a crime 
until the law makes it so. In the full le¬ 
gal sense a crime is any offense against 
the law; but violations of local ordinances, 
subject to fines only, are not regarded 
usually as crimes. A capital crime is a 
crime punishable by death. Murder, pira¬ 
cy, and treason are the capital crimes of 
most governments. Crimes punishable by 
death and those punishable by imprison¬ 
ment in a penitentiary are ordinarily called 
felonies. Offenses below the rank of fel¬ 
onies are known as misdemeanors. High 
crimes are felonies; petty crimes are mis¬ 
demeanors. See Capital Punishment. 

Crimea, krl-me'a, a peninsula of south¬ 
western Russia included between the Black 
Sea and the Sea of Azov. It contains an 
area of 10,000 square miles, with varying 
surface features from steppes to moun¬ 
tains. The steppes are, for the greater 
part, pasture land. The southern slopes 
of the mountains produce grapes, olives, 
and mulberries. The northern slopes pro¬ 
duce orchard fruits or grain. The me¬ 
tropolis and seaport is Sebastopol, with a 
population of 54,000. 

The peninsula is noted as the seat of the 
Crimean War of 1853-6. In pursuance of 


CRIMINAL LAW—CRISPIN 


designs on Turkey, including the control of 
Constantinople and the Bosporus, the Rus¬ 
sians fortified the heights of Sebastopol, 
converting the port into a fortress second 
among Mediterranean towns to Gibraltar 
only. In 1852 Russia deemed the time 
propitious to make demands on the Porte, 
this time for the right to protect Christians 
within the Turkish dominions. The de¬ 
mand was refused. The Russians advanced 
on Constantinople. The English and 
French, sinking national antipathy, hast¬ 
ened, not so much to defend the Turks, as 
to drive back the Russians. Joined by Sar¬ 
dinia, eager for a seat at the council board 
of nations, the allies dispatched a force of 
soldiers and a fleet far surpassing the fa¬ 
mous Spanish Armada. The Crimea was 
invaded September, 1854. The famous 
battles of Alma, Balaklava, and Inker- 
man were fought. The Russian defense 
of Sebastopol is comparable with that of 
Port Arthur in the Russian-Japanese war. 
Not until September 8th of the following 
year did “the flags of the Allies wave from 
the tower of Malakoff.” For the famous 
charge of the Light Brigade, see Bala¬ 
klava. 

In the treaty of peace that followed, 
Russia was forbidden the use of war ships 
on the Black Sea. The passage of war 
ships through the straits of Dardanelles 
was also forbidden. In 1871, when France 
was prostrate before Germany, Russia gave 
notice that she would no longer regard 
the first restriction; but the straits are 
still closed to the passage of war vessels 
without the permission of the Porte. 

Criminal Law. See Law. 

Crinoline, crin'o-lm, a stiff lining fab¬ 
ric composed of horsehair and linen. The 
name is derived from the Latin words 
crines, hair, and linum, flax. The so-called 
crinoline of the present day is made fre¬ 
quently of coarse cotton yarns. In finish¬ 
ing, the fabric is heavily sized to take the 
place of the natural stiffness of the horse¬ 
hair fabric. Crinoline was first used about 
the middle of the nineteenth century to 
stiffen women’s skirts. When the fashion 
of expanding the skirts grew to the ex¬ 
aggeration that demanded hoops or hoop 
skirts, the word crinoline was retained in 


the phrase “wearing crinolines,” which im¬ 
plied the wearing of hoops. 

Crispi, kres'pe, Francesco (1819-1901), 
an Italian statesman. He was born at Ri¬ 
bera, Sicily. He studied law at the Uni¬ 
versity of Palermo and began the practice 
of his profession at Naples, 1846. At the 
outbreak of the Sicilian revolution he be¬ 
came active in guiding the insurrection and 
upon the restoration of the Bourbons was 
obliged to flee from Sicily. Continuing to 
conspire for the redemption of Italy he 
was driven in succession from Piedmont, 
Malta and Paris, at last joining Mazzini in 
London. In 1859 he returned to Italy, de¬ 
claring himself openly a Republican and 
in favor of national unity. In the insur¬ 
rection of 1860 Crispi served as mayor un¬ 
der Garibaldi and the following year was 
returned by Palermo to the first Italian 
parliament. In 1876 he became president 
of the Chamber of Deputies, minister of 
the interior in 1877, and prime minister in 
1887, filling the latter office till 1891, and 
again 1893-1897. Crispi favored the 
triple alliance of Italy, Germany and Aus¬ 
tria, and formed warm friendships with 
Bismarck and Gladstone. His popularity 
in Italy suffered by his support of the 
Triple Alliance and by reason of his meas¬ 
ures regarding taxation. Two attempts 
were made to assassinate him. His politi¬ 
cal enemies brought charges against him 
which, although he was acquitted, injured 
him in the eyes of the people. In spite of 
this he was re-elected to Parliament in 
1898 by an immense majority. He was 
now an old man and growing blind. An 
operation restored his sight, but his gen¬ 
eral health failed and he was obliged to 
give up his political activity. Crispi was 
remarkable for his intense patriotism, his 
earnestness in working for reform and his 
ability to arouse his fellow men to a reali¬ 
zation of the needs of the times and of 
their duty as citizens. 

Crispin, a Roman martyr of noble fam¬ 
ily. Obliged to flee from Rome during 
the persecutions of Diocletian, Crispin 
maintained himself in what is now Sois- 
sons, France, by making shoes. He was 
so charitable, the legend runs, that he even 
stole leather to make shoes for the poor, 


CRITTENDEN—CROCODILE 


He suffered martyrdom in 287. October 
25th is St. Crispin’s day. He is the patron 
saint of shoemakers, who are jocularly 
called knights of St. Crispin. 

Crittenden, John J. (1787-1863), an 
American lawyer and legislator, to whose 
influence is due the fact that Kentucky re¬ 
mained loyal to the Union during the Civil 
War. He w r as born at Versailles, Ken¬ 
tucky. His education was received at Wil¬ 
liam and Mary College from which he 
graduated at the age of twenty, imme¬ 
diately beginning the study of law. He 
served in the War of 1812, in 1816 was 
made a member of the state legislature and 
in 1817 was elected to the United States 
Senate. He resigned in three years, but 
was re-elected in 1835, again in 1842, and 
still again in 1855. From 1848 to 1850 he 
was governor of Kentucky. He had been 
a Democrat, but favored Henry Clay and 
became a “Henry Clay Whig.” In 1860 he 
joined the Constitutional Union party and 
it was he who proposed the famous Critten¬ 
den Compromise, the best known of the 
various plans suggested just before the 
Civil War for bringing about a compromise 
between the North and South. 

Crochet, cro-sha', a variety of hand 
knitting. It is produced by drawing yarn 
into loops or meshes with a long, slender 
needle of steel, bone, or ivory, hooked at 
one end. Crochet work is known to have 
been in use as early as the fourteenth cen¬ 
tury. Crocheting may be done with fine 
cotton, linen, or silk thread, producing even 
and delicate laces. It may also be done 
with heavy cord, rope silk, or yarns of eight 
strands, such as double zephyr. A great 
variety of articles is produced from these 
different materials. From thread are made 
laces, trimmings, doilies, collars and cuffs, 
infants’ caps, etc. From heavy silks and 
yarns are made mittens, gloves, shawls, 
vests, jackets, scarfs, undergarments, 
hoods, caps, leggings, etc. The work is 
easier on the hands and more rapid than 
knitting. After learning a variety of 
stitches, an article of almost any shape 
can be produced; or an article that is seen 
may be readily imitated. A machine has 
been made for crocheting the common shell 
stitch pattern. It produces an edging used 


for finishing knitted underwear and a 
great variety of small articles. 

Crockett, David (1786-1836), an 
American pioneer and politician. He was 
born at Limestone, Tennessee, August 17, 
1786. He was killed at the defense of the 
Alamo at San Antonio, Texas, March 6, 
1836. He was a member of Congress from 
Tennessee from 1827-33, and held a com¬ 
mand in the Texan War of 1835-6. He 
was famous among frontiersmen as an un¬ 
failing shot. Allusions to Crockett’s coon 
have their origin in a story that found its 
way to the halls of Congress. Having 
treed a coon one day, Crockett was about 
to take aim, when the coon called out, 
“Don’t shoot, Colonel, I’ll come down; I’m 
a gone coon.” See Alamo. 

Crockett, Samuel Rutherford (1862-), 
a Scottish novelist. He was educated at 
Edinburgh and Oxford, and entered the 
ministry of the Free Church of Scotland. 
He was pastor of Penicuik for some years, 
but finally abandoned the ministry for lit¬ 
erature. His first novel was The Stic kit 
Minister. Other well known stories are 
The Lilac Sunbonnet, The Men of the 
Moss Hags, The Red Axe, The Black 
Douglas, The Firebrand, The Silver Skull, 
Kit Kennedy, and Joan of the Sivord 
Hand. 

Crocodile, krok'6-dil, a huge lizard¬ 
shaped reptilian, chiefly of Egypt and In¬ 
dia. The crocodile is exceeded in size by 
but four animals. It is the largest of all 
animals hatched from an egg. It attains 
a length of from ten to twenty feet. Its 
enormous jaws are armed with sixty-eight 
formidable teeth. The largest teeth of the 
lower jaw fit into cavities in the upper 
jaw; and the largest teeth of the upper 
jaw fit into corresponding cavities of the 
lower jaw. The jaws close with a sort of 
lock which enables the crocodile to hang 
on to its prey with its entire weight. The 
back is covered with bony plates set in a 
thick, leathery skin. So far as they go the 
plates furnish an armor which it is diffi¬ 
cult to pierce with an ordinary bullet or 
weapon, but the skin between the plates 
is vulnerable. The animal cannot turn 
quickly, but it has a long tail flattened 
sidewise with which it can strike terrific 



Caiman, Central and South America. 2. Crocodile, Nile River. 3. Salt Water Crocodile, Malaysia. 4. Gavial, Ganges River. 

CROCODILES. 















































CROCUS—CROMLECH 


blows and knock its prey around in 
reach of its mouth. The crocodile hunts its 
food around the margins of rivers and 
ponds, keeping all but the upper part of 
its head under water. It sinks when 
alarmed and can stay under the water for 
an hour and a half at a time. It swims 
with the tail, not with the feet. The 
chief food of the crocodile is fish. Large 
prey is hidden in a water hole and later 
dragged ashore to be eaten. The eggs, 
thirty to sixty, somewhat smaller than 
those of a goose, are deposited in a low 
heap of muck on the hot sand, and left 
for the sun to hatch, though it is said 
that the female defends the nest and 
scratches off the sand to liberate her young. 

The crocodile of the Nile was held in 
reverence by the natives* Crocodile wor¬ 
ship rose to such an extreme that sacred 
crocodiles were kept in temples, adorned 
with jewelry, led in religious processions, 
and mummified when dead. The croco¬ 
diles of the Ganges were also protected by 
idolatrous ideas and grew exceedingly bold 
and dangerous, especially as they had ac¬ 
quired a shark’s appetite for human vic¬ 
tims. 

The crocodile is distributed more widely 
than was supposed. In 1875 genuine croc¬ 
odiles fourteen feet long were discovered 
in Florida. The scales are ridged more 
sharply and the snout is narrower than 
in the case of the alligator. Their habits 
and haunts are much the same. In addi¬ 
tion to two gavials of northern India and 
Borneo, and five caimans of the Amazon 
region, there are no less than ten genuine 
crocodiles. They are found in Florida, 
Central America, Cuba, Australia, and 
Malaysia, also in the Orinoco, the Niger, 
the Congo, the Nile, and the Ganges Riv¬ 
ers respectively. 

The crocodile of the menageries is 
caught napping on the sand. A dozen half 
naked Africans armed with clubs fight him 
away from the water’s edge until a lucky 
blow half stuns him. Then they pile on, 
bind his jaws together with a rope, tie his 
feet to his body, and lash him to a stiff 
pole. The trapper then floats him down 
the river and puts him into a cage ready 
for shipment—probably to Hamburg. 


Crocus, a genus of plants belonging to 
the iris or flag family. The word is the 
Greek name for saffron. In fact the saf¬ 
fron of commerce is the pollen of the com¬ 
mon crocus of the Mediterranean regions. 
About thirty species of the crocus are 
known to the American florist. Bulbs 
planted in the fall beneath the shelter of 
rich litter send up large flowers of many 
colors in early spring. Holmes speaks of 

The spendthrift crocus, bursting through the 
mold, 

Naked and shivering with his crop of gold. 

Croesus, kre'sus (560 B. C.), the last 
king of Lydia in Asia Minor. He extend¬ 
ed the limits of his father’s kingdom. From 
tribute mines and the sands of a local 
mountain stream, the Pactolus, he accumu¬ 
lated so much gold that “as rich as Croe¬ 
sus” became a proverbial expression. In 
his prosperity he deemed himself the hap¬ 
piest of mortals; but Solon, the wise Greek, 
denied him the title, saying no man could 
be sure of happiness during his lifetime. 
Surely enough, misfortune overtook him. 
His favorite son was killed, and Cyrus, 
the Persian, took away his wealth and his 
dominion. 

Cromlech, krom'lek, an ancient Celtic 
place of burial. It consists essentially of 
three or more upright stones supporting 
an unhewn slab beneath which sepulchral 
remains are found. Very frequently the 
cromlech shelters a burial urn or cham¬ 
ber, lined with stones and containing a 
skeleton, with weapons, pottery, and other 
indications that the dead were persons of 
rank. These sepulchers are commonest in 
the territory last occupied by the Celts, as 
Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, Dev¬ 
onshire, and Brittany; but they are found 
throughout England and many localities 
of the continent. Sometimes a slab is no 
larger than two persons may lift. Many 
are very heavy, however. That of a cel¬ 
ebrated cromlech in Cornwall is calculated 
to weigh twenty tons; the capstone of one 
in Wales is 12 feet long, 10 feet wide, and 
4 feet thick; one near Dublin, resting on 
6 blocks, is 23 feet long, 17 feet wide, and 
6 feet thick; the Witches’ Stone in the 
vicinity of Edinburgh is about 10 feet wide 
and 12 feet in length. 


CROMPTON—CROMWELL 


Crompton, Samuel (1753-1827), an 
English spinner and weaver; the inventor 
of the spinning-mule. Crompton was born 
at Firwood, near Bolton, Lancashire. His 
parents were poor and, like other farmers in 
that vicinity, eked out a scanty living by 
spinning and weaving. The father died 
while the children were still young. His 
widow struggled hard to educate her chil¬ 
dren, and young Crompton put forth every 
effort to obtain a mathematical education. 
Finding himself hindered in weaving by 
the difficulty of getting suitable yarn, he 
set to work to invent some machine by 
which better yarn could be spun and great¬ 
er quantities produced than by the Har¬ 
greaves jenny. For five years Crompton 
labored, almost literally night and day, 
and spent every cent he could spare to 
carry out his project. The machine which 
he finally constructed produced such fine 
yarn that his house was beset by people 
wishing to discover his secret. It is said 
that ladders were placed against his win¬ 
dows in the effort to obtain a sight of his 
machine. Crompton could not afford to 
take out a patent. At last, under the writ¬ 
ten promise of a liberal subscription, he 
disclosed his invention to certain manufac¬ 
turers. He received in return less than 
$300. He set to work bravely, however, 
to build up a manufacturing business. 
Years afterward, near the close of a toil¬ 
some life, he received from Parliament a 
reward of $25,000 which was entirely in¬ 
adequate to the needs of his manufactory. 
The importance of Crompton’s invention 
cannot be overestimated. The Hargreaves 
jenny and the Arkwright roller frame made 
possible the Crompton spinning-mule, but 
it at once superseded the earlier machines. 
Thirty years after Crompton brought out 
his machine there were twelve times as 
many in use as there were Arkwright 
frames, while the Hargreaves jenny was 
left still farther in the rear. See Spin¬ 
ning; Hargreaves; Arkwright. 

Cromwell, Oliver (1599-1658), lord 
protector of Great Britain and Ireland. 
Born at Huntington, April 25, 1599; died 
in London, September 3, 1658. The Crom¬ 
well line of knights dated from the reign 
of Queen Elizabeth- Oliver’s mother could 
11-21 


trace her descent back to Alexander, lord 
steward—or Stuart as the name came to 
be written—the founder of the family on 
the throne of England. Cromwell married 
a daughter of a landed proprietor who pre¬ 
fixed Sir to his name so that he was, we 
may say, well connected on all sides. 

Cromwell appeared in Parliament in 
1628. Although clad in slouchy, rustic 
dress, he had had a year at Cambridge. 
He proved to be a man of rude, ready, 
impressive eloquence, a determined friend 
of fair play. He was a zealous advocate 
of freedom in religious matters—opposed 
to the idea of a state church. He at once 
became prominent and influential. At the 
close of the term for which he was first 
elected he retired to a farm at Ely which 
he had inherited. He came to be known 
as a god-fearing, earnest, just man—a rais¬ 
er of cattle. 

A thoroughly characteristic anecdote is 
told of his fairness in neighborhood mat¬ 
ters. Some enterprising speculators formed 
a plan to drain the fertile fens and swamps 
near Ely, in order to convert them to their 
own use. Cromwell withstood the project¬ 
ors so stoutly as to defeat the scheme. 
His poorer neighbors whose rights of pas¬ 
turage he thus upheld had unbounded con¬ 
fidence in him and dubbed him the “lord 
of the fens.” Later, when troublous times 
broke out, these same neighbors followed 
him through thick and thin. No matter 
what odds were opposed, no matter how 
deeply he might charge into the ranks of 
the enemy, these old Ironsides, as his regi¬ 
ment came to be called, were at his back, 
laying on lusty blows for country, for God, 
and for Oliver. Cromwell was one of the 
greatest leaders of men the world has seen. 
His influence sprang from the very fens of 
his native shire. Leadership of men begins 
at home. 

He was a member of the several Parlia¬ 
ments that were summoned and sent home 
by the king. When bitterness, spring¬ 
ing from the broken promises of the king 
and religious factions, rose so high that 
actual hostilities broke out between the 
royalists and the adherents of Parliament, 
Cromwell formed the famous troop of cav¬ 
alrymen to which we have referred and 


CRONUS—CROOKES 


took the field. He was without doubt a 
military genius. Practically without mili¬ 
tary experience until he had reached the 
age of forty, he transformed raw recruits 
into the most formidable body of soldiers 
in Europe. Like Joab of old he never lost 
a battle. His first exploit was the capture 
of military supplies at Cambridge in 1642. 
Marston Moor, Naseby, and a score of 
victories followed. Cromwell and his 
“praying, snivelling, long-faced troop,” 
ever in the thick of the fight, hewed down 
the “sons of sin—the children of the har- 
lot that sits on seven hills.” 

Cromwell rose higher and higher in 
command, until he became the embodiment 
of the Puritan cause. King Charles I was 
driven into Scotland, brought back, and 
beheaded on the charge of breaking his 
word with Parliament. Cromwell’s signa¬ 
ture stood third on the death warrant. 
Ireland was quickly wrested from the 
royalists. Charles II raised the Stuart 
banner in Scotland, but was defeated at 
Dunbar, Stirling, and Worcester. December 
12, 1653, Parliament, now subservient to 
Cromwell, proclaimed him lord protector 
■—a sort of president—of the Common¬ 
wealth. 

Cromwell pursued a vigorous policy at 
home and on the sea. He was the lead¬ 
ing man in Europe—a sort of Bismarck 
among crowned heads. Without increas¬ 
ing taxes, he caused public business to be 
managed honestly. Judges were appointed 
to do justice to all classes of people. He 
lived at Hampton Court a few miles up the 
Thames, but, as it happened, died at White¬ 
hall Palace in London. He was buried 
in the beautiful chapel of King Henry VII 
in Westminster Abbey. He was succeeded 
for a few months by his son Richard, a 
weak man. 

In 1659 the same Charles who was 
routed at Dunbar was restored to the throne 
of his father as Charles II. One of his 
first acts was to order the body of Crom¬ 
well taken up and hanged at Tyburn. The 
body was afterward buried beneath the 
gallows. The head was cut off, fixed on 
a pole, and set up at Westminster. 

In early manhood, Cromwell, Pym, and 
others, who afterward became famous in 


1 

the councils of the Parliamentary party 
cherished for a time the project of join¬ 
ing the Puritan colonies in New England. 
During Cromwell’s term of influence the 
immigration to the American colonies 
largely ceased, because the persecutions of 
the Puritans ceased, they themselves being 
in power. The colonies were favored in 
many ways. 

The worst stain on Cromwell’s memory 
is his cruel, not to say brutal, treatment 
of Ireland. Under his direction the Catho¬ 
lic Irish adherents of the Stuarts were 
butchered with a degree of ferocity worthy 
of Indian warfare. 

See Charles II; Commonwealth. 

Cronus, or Kronos, kro'nus, in Greek 
mythology, one of the Titans, son of 
Uranus (Sky) and Gaea or Ge (Earth). 
Cronus married his sister Rhea and 
reigned in Olympus during the Golden Age. 
Then Zeus, the son of Cronus, led a rebel¬ 
lion against his father and the Titans, and 
Zeus was victorious ; the Titans were driv¬ 
en into Tartarus and punished in various 
ways. Zeus now reigned in Olympus. Cron¬ 
us was sometimes called the god of time. 
This idea seems to have arisen from the 
similarity between the words Cronus and 
Chronos, time. According to later authori¬ 
ties, the word Cronus is from an entirely 
different root. See Saturn; Mythology; 
Golden Age; Hesiod. 

Crook, George (1828-1890), an Indian 
fighter. He completed the West Point 
course in 1852, and served with gallantry at 
South Mountain, Antietam, and Chicka- 
mauga. He was with Grant at Appomat¬ 
tox. After the Civil War he rose to the 
rank of major-general, and was commander 
of the United States forces in Idaho, Ari¬ 
zona, and the department of the Missouri. 
He rode in many a hard campaign against 
the Apaches, Comanches, and Sioux. He 
died at Chicago. See Miles; Apache; 
Custer. 

Crookes, William, an English electri¬ 
cian and chemist. He was born in London 
June 17, 1832. He was educated at Ox¬ 
ford. At thirty-one he was a fellow of the 
Royal Society. In 1897 he was knighted 
for brilliant discoveries in physics. He 
is the author of a number of practical 



CROQUET—CROSS 


works pertaining to the manufacture of 
beet root sugar, dyeing, the sewage ques¬ 
tion, etc. He is best known, however, as the 
inventor of Crookes’ tubes. They are 
sealed glass bulbs or tubes from which the 
air has been exhausted to a high degree of 
rarefaction. Sir William Crookes dis¬ 
covered that by passing electrical currents 
through these tubes they were lighted up 
brilliantly with green, pink, and many 
other colors,- highly suggestive of the 
northern lights. See X Rays. 

Croquet, kro-ka', a lawn game played 
with mallets, balls, stakes, and wickets. 
A stake is driven at each end of the 
ground. Nine wickets are driven, five in 
a central row leading from post to post, 
and two others on each side. The game 
may be played by two persons. Each 

player is allowed to strike his ball once 
with the mallet, driving it along a line 
which makes the round of the wickets. If 
it pass through a wicket, he is entitled to 
play again, or if his ball strike that of 
an opponent, he is entitled to place his 
ball by the side of it and strike his own 
ball. This he aims to do in such a 
manner that his opponent’s ball is rolled 
out of position, while his own comes in 
front of a wicket. He is then entitled 
to another play for his wicket, which won, 
he may again, if not in place, play his op¬ 
ponent’s ball and thus continue. It is 
not at all impossible for a skillful player, 
with the aid of his opponent’s ball, to 
make the entire round and strike his home 
post without giving his opponent an op¬ 
portunity to stop his progress. Four can 
play to a still better advantage by pairing 
off. Those who play together assist each 
other. When a player cannot make a 
wicket he aims to leave his ball where 
it may be played upon by his partner; 
and likewise, when one player gets pos¬ 
session of his partner’s ball, he aims by a 
split shot to throw it into position for a 
wicket and yet leave his own in an ad¬ 
vantageous position. The game is in some 
respects like that of billiards. It calls for 
a firm wrist and a true eye. See Pall 
Mall. 

Cross, an ancient gibbet, consisting es¬ 
sentially of an upright piece and a cross¬ 


piece. It preceded the modern gallows, 
and was in common use among the Ro¬ 
mans at the time of the crucifixion of 
Christ. There are several forms. The 
Latin cross, or the cross of the crucifixion, 
consisted of a long upright beam, crossed 
by a transverse beam near the top. St. An¬ 
drew’s cross has the form of an X. St. 
Anthony’s cross has the form of the let¬ 
ter T. The Greek cross is like the Latin 
cross except that the four arms are of 
equal length. The Maltese cross consists 
of four triangular arms with their points 
to the center. Cathedrals are built in the 
form of a Latin or a Greek cross. The 
top, or choir, points invariably toward the 
east. The cross is the emblem of sorrow, 
suffering, and burden bearing. A crucifix 
is a cross bearing an effigy of Christ. It 
took the place of the plain cross about the 
eighth or ninth century. It is used above 
the altar in the Greek, the Roman, and 
in some Lutheran churches. See Cres¬ 
cent. 

Cross, Mrs. Mary Ann Evans (1819- 
1880), an English novelist, best known 
by her pen name of George Eliot. She 
was born in a “small, low-roofed farm¬ 
house” in Warwickshire, only thirty miles 
from Shakespeare’s home at Stratford. Her 
mother was a woman of intelligence and 
force of character. Her father, Robert 
Evans, who had learned the trade of car¬ 
penter and builder, was a surveyor, as well 
as a farmer; and was land agent also to 
Sir Roger Newgate. He was a high- 
minded sort of man, whose practical judg¬ 
ment, and experience won him a reputation 
throughout a wide neighborhood. Marian, 
as she was called among her friends, was 
the youngest child. Soon after her birth 
the family removed to a larger home, Griff 
House, on the same property. This was 
the family residence for twenty years. 
Marian was sent to a nearby boarding 
school at an early age, and at thirteen to 
another school at Coventry. She was a 
reader from her earliest childhood, but 
was not particularly fond of her lessons, 
until she reached the age of twelve, when 
she developed a desire for knowledge and 
a marked ability in its acquisition. At 
Coventry she came under religious influ- 


CROSS, MARY ANN EVANS 


ences which tended to deepen her natural 
seriousness and conscientiousness. 

When she was sixteen Marian’s mother 
died, and she became her father’s house¬ 
keeper. We might expect to find in the 
future novelist a dreamy, unpractical sort 
of girl, who would prove an indifferent 
housekeeper. On the contrary, she was 
neat, quick, and energetic—a good cook 
and a skillful needlewoman. Household 
duties did not hinder her from continuing 
her studies. This she was able to do more 
satisfactorily when, in 1841, her brother 
brought a wife to the old house, and father 
and daughter took up their abode in a new 
home near Coventry. Here she had several 
tutors. Her favorite studies were music 
and foreign languages, including French, 
German, Italian, Greek, and Latin. He¬ 
brew she studied alone. Her reading cov¬ 
ered a wide field. 

Marian became intimate about this time 
with Charles Bray, his wife, Caroline Hen- 
nell, and her brother, Charles Hennell. 
These people were freethinkers, and were 
influential in leading Miss Evans to a de¬ 
cided change in her religious views. Strauss, 
a German theologian, completed the work 
these friends had begun. Miss Evans was 
occupied for two years in translating his 
Life of Jesus into English. In this 'work 
Strauss attempts to prove that the narra¬ 
tives of the New Testament are almost 
wholly mythical. In 1849 Mr. Evans died. 
Marian went abroad for a time and, on 
her return, visited London, living as a 
boarder in the house of John Chapman, 
editor of the Westminster Review. This 
association led to her accepting a position 
as assistant to Mr. Chapman, with which 
her literary career really began. Her spe¬ 
cial work for some time consisted of re¬ 
views of contemporary literature. 

Miss Evans was at this time a delight¬ 
ful companion. She was musical, playing 
more than tolerably well; she was a charm¬ 
ing conversationalist; and she was the most 
learned woman in England. Among other 
literary persons,’ she became acquainted 
with George H. Lewes. Her affiliation 
with him has been regarded as the one 
doubtful step in her life. It is but just 
to state that no one questions Miss Evans’ 


conscientiousness. Mr. Lewes had been de¬ 
serted by his wife. The technicalities of 
the English law made a divorce impossible. 
Miss Evans went to live with him, and, 
until his death, remained his faithful wife, 
and a loyal and devoted mother to his de¬ 
serted children. Whatever may be said of 
the abstract morality of this step, two ef¬ 
fects must be noted. It has injured her in¬ 
fluence which, in every other respect, has 
been on the side of the highest type of 
morality. On the other hand, Mr. Lewes’ 
influence on her literary career was most 
beneficial; so much so, in fact, that it is 
questionable whether, without it, her great¬ 
est work would have been produced. 

Her first writing in the line of fiction 
was at his suggestion. The Sad Fortunes 
of the Reverend Amos Barton, the first 
story in her Scenes of Clerical Life, was 
sent to Blackwood's Magazine over the 
pseudonym of George Eliot, by which 
name the author was destined to be known 
henceforth. The other stories in the series 
soon followed. In 1859 Adam Bede was 
published. This work at once placed 
George Eliot’s name with those of Eng¬ 
land’s greatest novelists, Dickens and 
Thackeray. Other novels were produced 
in rapid succession. A complete list of her 
writings is as follows: 

Life of Jesus (translation), 1846. 

Essence of Christianity (translation), 1854 

Scenes of Clerical Life, January, 1858. 

Adam Bede, February 1, 1859. 

The Mill on the Floss, April 4, 1860. 

The Lifted Veil, 1860. 

Silas Marner, March, 1861. 

Romola, 1863. 

Felix Holt, 1866. 

The Spanish Gypsy (dramatic poem), 1868. 

Address to Workmen, 1868. 

Agatha, 1869. 

How Lisa Loved the King, 1869. 

Middlemarch, 1871-2. 

The Legend of Jubal, and other poems, May, 
1874. 

Daniel Deronda, 1876. 

The Impressions of Theophrastus Such, 1879. 

The identity of George Eliot had been 
kept a secret from the reading public, and 
even from the editor of Blackwood's, un¬ 
til after the publication of Adam Bede. 
The credit of the stories being given to 
another, who was either unable or unwill¬ 
ing to set people right in the matter, 


CROSS, MARY ANN EVANS 


made it necessary for the author to dis¬ 
close herself. In 1878 Mr. Lewes died. 
A year and a half later, Mrs. Lewes mar¬ 
ried John Walter Cross, a London banker 
some twenty years her junior. Her death 
occurred quite suddenly in 1880. 

George Eliot’s life was externally quiet 
and uneventful. Her inner life, we can 
scarcely doubt, was sufficiently exciting. 
Life itself was a serious matter with her. 
Her views of life, her religion, her friend¬ 
ships, her human relations,—all stirred her 
profoundly. Personally, she was a rather 
small, homely woman, with a large, strong- 
featured, yet gentle face. Frederick My¬ 
ers speaks of “her grave, majestic counte¬ 
nance.” She was quiet, almost timid in 
bearing, with a refined, sympathetic voice, 
a quickness and clearness of thought, and 
a gift of expression which made her so¬ 
ciety unusually fascinating. She was by 
nature of a religious temperament; but so 
logical of mind that faith without sight 
was almost an impossibility. Reared in 
the Church of England, she was converted, 
at the age when most susceptible to re¬ 
ligious impressions, to the views of the 
“Dissenters,” as the Methodists and Bap¬ 
tists were called. Conscientious in her 
views to an extreme, but coming under the 
influence of skepticism before her char¬ 
acter was formed or her intellectual powers 
fully developed, it would seem that the 
agnostic views to which she adhered 
throughout life were inevitable. She 
showed, however, a profound respect for all 
religious feeling and belief in others. No 
other w-riter of fiction has treated religion 
with greater respect, delicacy, and appre¬ 
ciation of truth in different forms. In 
Adam Bede, Methodism; in Romola, Ca¬ 
tholicism; in Daniel Deronda, Judaism— 
in all she makes clear that to her the re¬ 
ligious emotion,—not the religious creed,— 
is the real and vital truth. 

Mr. Cross, her husband and biographer, 
says of her that “she showed from her 
sarliest years the trait that was most marked 
in her through life,—namely the absolute 
need of some one person who should be 
all in all to her, and to whom she should 
be all in all.” Knowing this trait of her 
nature, her life story is made clearer. In 


her earliest childhood she had her brother 
Isaac. The story of the childhood of Tom 
and Maggie Tulliver in The Mill on the 
Floss is said to be a true picture of the early 
years of Isaac and Marian Evans. Then 
she had her father. Just before his death 
she wrote, “What shall I be without my 
father? It will seem as if a part of my 
moral nature were gone.” Again she leaned 
upon Mr. Lewes and found in him the 
human sympathy and support she craved. 
Her marriage to Mr. Cross so soon after 
her first husband’s death came as a shock 
to many of her friends. But her nature 
demanded this human companionship and 
would not be denied. 

In intellectual power George Eliot is 
often regarded as masculine, so virile were 
her reasoning faculties; so vigorous and 
free from prejudice her judgments; so 
philosophic the general trend of her 
thought. In character she was essentially 
feminine, affectionate, proud, sensitive; 
easily moved to tears or laughter; intense 
in her enjoyments and sorrows. To this 
union of the masculine and feminine is 
due much of her power as .a writer of 
fiction. 

George Eliot’s novels are divided usu¬ 
ally into two groups. The first four in 
the list are based on circumstances com¬ 
ing under the author’s own observation dur¬ 
ing her early life in Warwickshire. The 
other and later novels belong to the second 
class, and are based upon certain special 
studies. Romola, one of the world’s great 
novels, is a picture of Florentine life dur¬ 
ing the fifteenth century. The material 
for Felix Holt, which is a claim for polit¬ 
ical equality, was obtained from files of 
old newspapers. For Middlemarcli, a rath¬ 
er tedious picture of life, although liter¬ 
ary critics often call it her greatest work, 
studies were made of medical treatises and 
medical colleges. In Daniel Deronda, a 
study of Judaism, the treatment accorded 
the Jew by the Christian furnishes the 
theme. 

There is a diversity of opinion as to 
which of George Eliot’s novels should be 
regarded as the greatest. Silas Manner is 
the favorite usually with young people. It 
is the simplest, and yet the most perfect in 


CROSSBILL 


execution. Adam Bede has attracted, 
doubtless, the largest number of readers. 
Romo la? Middlemarch, Daniel Deronda, 
—each is defended for first place by a 
band of admirers. 

George Eliot as a novelist is placed 
frequently ahead of both Dickens and 
Thackeray. Judged by the standards of 
the modern critic this is perhaps just. She 
shows a greater power in the analysis and 
development of character than either. She 
is more accurate, and is possessed of wider 
and more varied culture. Above all, her 
insight into the spiritual life of men and 
women surpasses that of any other novelist. 
Judged, however, by the standards of the 
average reader of novels, George Eliot’s 
philosophy is too somber, especially in her 
later novels; her analysis of character be¬ 
comes too minute,—the story is almost lost 
in psychological problems. Thackeray is 
more amusing; Dickens leaves the reader 
happier. From first to last, however, 
George Eliot’s novels present the highest 
moral standards. They teach the sov¬ 
ereignty of duty; the rewards of unflag¬ 
ging endeavor; the heroism of common¬ 
place, everyday life, where selfish motives 
are lost sight of for the universal good. 

Mary Blanchard Murphy. 

SAYINGS. 

It is hard to be wise on an empty stomach. 

It’s easy finding reasons why other people 
should be patient. 

I’ve never any pity for conceited people, be¬ 
cause I think they carry their comfort about with 
them. 

When Death, the great reconciler, has come, it 
is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our 
severity. 

Th’ young men nooadeys, th’re poor squashy 
things,—the’ looks weel enoof, but the’ woon’t 
wear, the’ woon’t wear. 

Speculative truth begins to appear but a shad¬ 
ow of individual minds. Agreement between in¬ 
tellects seems unattainable, and we turn to the 
truth of feeling as the only universal bond of 
union. 

It is never too late to be what you might have 
been. 

My books are deeply serious things to me, 
and come out of all the painful discipline, all 
the most hardly learnt lessons of my past life. 

The only effect I ardently long to produce 
by my writings is, that those who read them 
should be better able to imagine and to feel the 


pains and the joys of those who differ from them¬ 
selves in everything but the broad fact of being 
struggling, erring, human creatures. 

0 may I join the choir invisible 
Of those immortal dead who live again 
In minds made better by their presence; live 
In pulses stirred to generosity, 

In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn 
For miserable aims that end with self, 

In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like 
stars, 

And with their mild persistence urge man’s 
search 

To vaster issues. 

' SAID OF GEORGE ELIOT. 

Her conversation was deeply sympathetic, but 
grave and solemn, illumined by happy phrases and 
by thrilling tenderness, but not by humor. Al¬ 
though her features were heavy and not well 
proportioned, all was forgotten when that majes¬ 
tic head bent slowly down, and the eyes were lit 
up with a penetrating and lively gaze. She ap¬ 
peared much greater than her books. Her ability 
seemed to shrink beside her moral grandeur.— 
Oscar Browning. 

A large intelligence was her dominant char¬ 
acteristic. However keenly she might feel, she 
could always see more keenly still. She not 

only had the creative imagination which brought 
forth these children of her brain; she had the 
piercing gift of analysis as well. So that more 
than any other English novelist, when her char¬ 
acters were once born, she had the power of 

probing to the quick all their secret impulses and 
springs of action. 

In a word, the difference between Dickens’s 
and George Eliot’s powers is here typified : Dick¬ 
ens tends toward the satiric or destructive view of 
the old times; George Eliot, with an even more 
burning intolerance of the essential evil, takes on 
the other hand the loving or constructive view. 
It is for this reason that George Eliot’s work, 
as a whole, is so much finer than some of Dick¬ 
ens’s. The great artist never can work in haste, 
never in malice, never in even the sub-acid, 

satiric mood of Thackeray: in love, and love 

only, can great work, work that not only pulls 
down but builds up, be done; it is love, and 
love only, that is truly constructive in art.—Sid¬ 
ney Lanier. 

George Eliot shows man what he may be, in 
terms of what he is.—Sidney Lanier. 

Crossbill, a bird of the finch or spar¬ 
row family. The red or American cross¬ 
bill is an inhabitant of evergreen forests 
from the Carolinas northward. The male 
is of a dull red color, with brown wings 
and tail. The female is of a dull olive 
green. The name comes from an apparent 
deformity of the bill. One tip turns to 
the right, the other to the left—a peculiar 
arrangement, which, combined with an 


CROSS BUNS—CROUP 


ability to move the tips laterally, enables 
the bird to spread the scales of pine or 
other cones in search of the seed within. 
It is a bird of the north. Its home is 
in the great coniferous forests. It nests 
about twenty feet from the ground. There 
is also a white-winged crossbill, and there 
are a number of Old World species. See 
Sparrow. 

Cross Buns, small cakes prepared es¬ 
pecially for Good Friday. They were ap¬ 
propriately marked with the sign of the 
cross, hence the name. They were always a 
popular feature of the English Lent, and 
some attempt has been made to revive their 
use in this country. The origin of the prac¬ 
tice of serving cross buns is thought to 
be rooted in some heathen practice long 
forgotten. Chambers states that at Chel¬ 
sea there were formerly two celebrated 
bun houses, besieged on Good Friday, both 
morning and night, by eager purchasers. 

Cross-Fertilization, in botany and hor¬ 
ticulture, the fertilization of the ovules of 
• ' 

one plant by pollen from another plant. 
Darwin, the investigator of fertilization, 
claims that plants raised from cuttings of 
the same parent, as potato plants raised 
from parts of the same potato, are prac¬ 
tically the same plant, and that true cross¬ 
fertilization can be secured only when the 
pollen and the ovules belong to plants 
raised from seeds. 

In many plants the pistils are ready for 
pollen before or else after the pollen of 
the same plant is ready to fall. In this 
case the pistil may receive pollen brought 
by the wind from another plant, perhaps 
miles away. Some flowers are so peculiarly 
constructed that there is no opportunity 
for the pollen to come in contact with 
the pistil. In this case the pistil depends 
on pollen brought to it by the legs of 
bees and other insects in search of sweets. 
In the case of the pea family the anthers 
so envelop the style of the pistil that cross¬ 
fertilization is unlikely to occur. The wind 
and insects are the chief agencies of cross¬ 
fertilization. Plant breeders protect the 
pistil from wind and insect by paper bags, 
and powder with pollen from the particu¬ 
lar plant desired. Darwin established the 
principle that seeds obtained by cross-ferti¬ 


lization are more vigorous, and produce 
stronger plants, than seeds obtained by 
close-fertilization. There are, of course, 
exceptions to the rule. He experimented 
with the common morning glory. He 
found that cross-fertilization and close-fer¬ 
tilization for one generation gave plants 
having average heights of 100 and 76 re¬ 
spectively; the fifth generation gave 100 
and 75. Seeds produced by ten successive 
cross-fertilizations, and seeds produced by 
ten successive close-fertilizations produced 
plants having heights of 100 and 54 re¬ 
spectively. If the prevailing wind be from 
the west when pollen is flying, it is evi¬ 
dent that a row of corn on the west side 
of a field must be close-fertilized, or not 
at all. Under the same wind conditions, 
the east row has slight chance of close- 
fertilization ; but the silk is likely to catch 
pollen from tassels growing in rows fur¬ 
ther west. Windy weather favors cross-fer¬ 
tilization. The skillful corn breeder 
chooses his seed from rows that are likely 
to be cross-fertilized. 

The beneficial effect of cross-fertilization 
upon morning glories and corn has been 
described. On the other hand, close-fer¬ 
tilization or inbreeding is best for some 
plants. Experiments with tobacco, for in¬ 
stance, have convinced growers that the 
best seed may be obtained by tying paper 
bass over the whole flower stalk in such a 
way as to shut out insects and exclude pol¬ 
len carried bv the wind. Seed obtained in 
this way is heavier, and produces not only 
more vigorous, but more uniform plants 
than seed obtained by miscellaneous cross¬ 
fertilization. 

Croton Bug. See Cockroach. 

Croup, a name applied to two quite dis¬ 
tinct diseases of childhood. True croup, or 
membranous croup, is in reality diphtheria 
of the larynx and adjacent parts. It is a 
dangerous disease and demands the imme¬ 
diate attention of a physician. False 
croup, the variety which is meant common¬ 
ly when the word croup is used, is a ca¬ 
tarrhal affection of the larynx. It comes on 
suddenly at night, the child awaking with 
a harsh, discordant cough accompanied by 
difficulty in breathing so great as to be 
terrifying to an onlooker. Unless it is 


CROW 


known that the child is subject to false 
croup a physician should be called to 
diagnose the case. If assured that the 
trouble is nothing more dangerous than 
common croup, the treatment is simple. If 
vomiting be induced, relief is almost sure to 



Crow blackbird. 

follow. Breathing steam, as from a pitcher 
of boiling water, is helpful. In croup as 
in many other diseases, however, prevention 
is better than cure. The trouble is a result 
frequently of exposure to wet and cold, and 
a child who is kept warm and dry if other¬ 
wise healthy will seldom have croup. In 
case of unavoidable exposure the child for 
whom croup is feared should be thoroughly 
warmed before he is put to bed. The entire 
chest should be bathed in warm water, 
dried, and thoroughly rubbed with cam¬ 
phorated oil, or some similar ointment. In 
most cases this will ward off an attack. 

Crow, a family of birds which includes 
the jay and the raven. There are said 
to be two hundred species. The crow is 
proverbially black. The common crow 
nests from Mexico to Hudson Bay, re¬ 
tiring into the southern half of its range 
in winter. It builds in a tree a bulky 
nest of twigs, strings, shreds of grape¬ 
vine, leaves, grasses, and moss, from twenty 
to thirty feet up. Eggs, four to six, bluish 
green, often mixed with shades of brown. 
The crow is nearly twenty inches in 


length. Were it not for his determination 
to have all the seed corn when planted, 
and a heavy rental when the corn is mature, 
the crow’s natural diet of insects, seeds, 
snails, grubs, and caterpillars would cause 
the farmer no uneasiness. 

Th£ crow is a wary 
bird. A flock of crows 
feeds always in charge of 
a sentinel, at whose warn¬ 
ing caw there is no delay 
in winging to a place of 
safety. Apparently fa¬ 
miliar and bold, the crow 
learned, generations since, 
to tell the difference be¬ 
tween a man and a man 
with a gun; yet it is often 
imposed upon and kept 
away from a cornfield by 
a scarecrow hat and an 
old hay-stuffed coat in¬ 
geniously disposed on a 
pole. It is said that a 
crow can count as far as 
three; for if three per¬ 
sons enter a cornfield to 
lie in wait with guns the crows will re¬ 
main in distant tree-tops till three persons 
have gone out again; but that, if the num¬ 
ber of persons who enter in a group ex¬ 
ceeds three, the crows lose count and ap¬ 
proach the corn after three persons have 
gone away. 

The self assured kaw, kaw, kaw, of the 
crow, when it has nothing to fear, is ca¬ 
pable of considerable variation; and ingen¬ 
ious argument has been expended to prove 
that the crows have an intelligible though 
limited vocabulary. Some claim to have 
taught crows to talk. When on a journey, 
or when flying between its roost and feed¬ 
ing ground, the crow takes a straight 
course; which has passed into the con¬ 
venient expression of distance measured “as 
the crow flies.” Lowell emphasizes the de¬ 
lights of early summer with a charac¬ 
teristic, “The crows flapped over by twos 
and threes.” In winter the northern crows 
go south and gather together in large 
roosts, some of which Mr. Rhoads, writ¬ 
ing in the American Naturalist, has esti¬ 
mated as containing over 300,000 birds. 












CROW BLACKBIRD—CRUSADES 


A disagreeable habit of devouring the 
eggs of small birds has left the crow few 
feathered friends, but it seems to thrive 
under modern conditions. “I have seen 
no bird walk the ground with just the 
same air the crow does. It is not exactly 
pride; there is no strut or swagger in it, 
though perhaps just a little condescension; 
it is the contented, complaisant, and self- 
possessed gait of a lord over his domains. 
All these acres are mine, he says, and all 
these crops; men plow and sow for me, 
and I stay here or go there, and find life 
sweet and good wherever I am. The crow 
is a character I would not willingly miss 
from the landscape,” says Burroughs. 

The Florida crow is a smaller southern 
species of the pine woods. The fish crow 
is smaller than the common crow and, if 
there be any difference, blacker. It is 
no fonder of seashore winter diet than its 
relatives, but is seldom found far inland. 
With the exception of black in its wings 
and tail, the Clark crow is white. It nests 
in the high pine trees of the Rocky Moun¬ 
tains. British species are the rook, the 
jackdaw, the carrion crow, and the chough. 
See Jay. 

Crow Blackbird. See Blackbird. 

Crow Indians. See Dakota. 

Crown, a circlet worn on the head as 
an ornamental mark of honor, or emblem 
of authority. The Greek crown placed on 
the head of the victor in the national games 
consisted of a garland of laurel. The 
Romans bestowed a number of crowns,— 
a garland of wild flowers on the general 
who relieved a beleaguered garrison; a gar¬ 
land of oak leaves and acorns on him 
who saved the life of a Roman citizen in 
battle; and a golden band surmounted by 
miniature turrets on 4:he first to scale the 
walls of the enemy. The Roman bride 
wore a garland of flowers of her own pluck¬ 
ing and weaving. 

The crown of authority of sovereignty 
is supposed to be derived from the diadem 
of the Persians. Alexander the Great wore 
a crown. Charlemagne was crowned with 
the iron crown of the Lombards. His im¬ 
perial crown of heavy, pure gold, adorned 
with hundreds of large, uncut precious 
gems, and ornamented with inscriptions 


and enamels, is kept at Vienna. The triple 
crown of the pope is called his tiara. The 
royal crown of Great Britain consists of a 
band of gold enriched with precious stones 
and pearls, and heightened by four Maltese 
crosses alternating with fleur de lis. Im¬ 
perial arches spring from the crosses, unit¬ 
ing under a mound, above which rises a 
jeweled cross. The heir to the throne, 
royalty of each degree, and earls are en¬ 
titled to wear coronets. 

The term crown is used also in the 
sense of royal authority and the state. 
Thus the English speak of the preroga¬ 
tive of the crown, crown lands, crown 
ministers, crown lawyers, crown officers. 
Crimes, which in this country are called 
offenses against the state, are in the United 
Kingdom offenses against the crown. The 
governor-general of Canada is said to be 
appointed by the crown. 

Crown. See Money. 

Crown Jewels. See Tower of London. 

Crucifix. See Cross. 

Cruikshank, krdok'shank, George 
(1792-1878), an English caricaturist and 
artist. He was a native of London. When 
a child poverty prevented him from gain¬ 
ing a general education. Throughout his 
life he showed ability but want of culture. 
At the age of fifteen he was known as an 
illustrator of children’s books. Fame was 
achieved by a series of etchings made for 
Bentley's Miscellany in 1837 to accompany 
Oliver Twist, then running in serial form. 
The Bottle, a series of eight large plates, 
represents the various stages of drunken¬ 
ness in a style worthy of Hogarth. Tam 
O’Shanter, The Merry Wives of Windsor, 
Punch and Judy, Boz, the Comic Almanac, 
and many other subjects afforded oppor¬ 
tunity for humorous sketches. The British 
museum is the fortunate possessor of over 
5,000 sketches by this humorist. While he 
did not create types, like the G. O. P. or 
Uncle Sam of Nast, it may be said that 
few artists have done more to ridicule vice 
and purify the public taste than he. See 
Nast; Caricature. 

Crusades, a long struggle between 
Christian Europe and Mohammedan Asia 
for the possession of the Holy Sepulcher, 
or burial place of Christ. It lasted from 


CRUSOE, ROBINSON 


1100 to 1300. The several spasmodic move¬ 
ments of greatest force are known as The 
Eight Crusades. In an age when a pilgrim¬ 
age to a shrine. was the accepted way to 
win sanctity, forgiveness, or health, a pil¬ 
grimage to the tomb of Christ at Jerusalem 
was the holiest of all good works. The 
Canterbury pilgrimage described by Chau¬ 
cer is but an incident compared with the 
stream of pilgrims pouring into Palestine. 
In 1064, for example, a single company, 
setting out under the leadership of the 
Archbishop of Mainz, numbered 7,000 men. 
The Saracens, that is to say, the Arabs, in 
possession of the Holy Land, welcomed 
the pilgrim as a source of revenue; but 
the Turks who captured Jerusalem in 1076, 
though of the same religion as the Arabs, 
began to persecute the Christian travelers. 

A tremendous excitement ensued. Pope 
Urban convened a council. Fired by his 
eloquence, the multitude broke out into a 
frenzy of enthusiasm. “God wills it, God 
wills it,” was the cry. A holy war was 
proclaimed against the infidels. The am¬ 
bitious, the pious, the criminal, the needy, 
and the adventurous all found opportunity. 
The Knights of St. John, the Templars, 
and the Teutonic Order were all organized 
during this period. Immense hordes of 
Europeans were precipitated upon Asia 
Minor and Syria. In 1099 the Christians 
obtained possession of Jerusalem. Four 
brief European kingdoms were set up in 
Asia, but under Saladin the Moslems re¬ 
took the Holy City. 

Among the many expeditions was the 
Children’s Crusade, about 1212, instigated 
by the wild preaching of the times. Up¬ 
wards of 20,000 German children and 30,- 
000 French, both boys and girls, reinforced 
by bands from England and other 
countries of Europe, made their way on 
foot to Marseilles, Genoa, and to the 
Mediterranean ports. They expected the 
waters to part for them, as did the Red 
Sea before the children of Israel. Many 
were taken on board ships and conveyed to 
far-off shores where they were sold as 
slaves. Others were conveyed to the Holy 
Land. Large bands made their way over¬ 
land into the territory of the Turks, where 
they were slaughtered without mercy or 


were sold into slavery. Of the vast num¬ 
ber of children that set out to rescue the 
tomb of Christ, a mere remnant of 700 
was rescued from the infidels, seventeen 
years later, by Frederick II. Movements 
like these seem incredible. They remind 
the reader of the migrations of lemmings 
from the forests of Scandinavia to the sea. 
They resulted in the loss of thousands, pos¬ 
sibly of millions of lives, with no compen¬ 
sating benefit. 

The Third Crusade, led by Frederick 
Barbarossa, Philip II of France, and 
Richard the Lionhearted of England, is the 
most noted; but through jealousies it ac¬ 
complished perhaps the least. So far as 
political changes go the Crusades bore no 
result. The Turks fastened their grip on 
the Levant and hold it to this day. The 
civilization of Syria has been crushed out, 
but the Europeans learned much. Intense¬ 
ly as they despised the Turk, they learned 
to respect the Arab, and brought home 
many new notions. The commercial im¬ 
portance of Venice and Genoa was greatly 
increased. The Crusaders acquired a taste 
for the products of eastern lands. The 
spices, sugar, dates, melons, and apricots of 
the East became known in the West. Cot¬ 
ton, silk, calico, rugs, satins, velvets, mus¬ 
lins, and damasks were introduced. The 
use of various eastern oils, perfumes, and 
dyes began. The Crusaders learned how to 
build looms, windmills, and how to make 
glass. Venice and Genoa became great 
commercial cities and manufactories sprang 
up. The coarse manners of western Eu¬ 
rope were refined, and the people became 
more intelligent. It is much to be re¬ 
gretted that the period of Crusades did 
not accomplish more for the Levant, and 
that it did not result in driving the de¬ 
basing Turk out of Europe and western 
Asia, but the effect on western Europe was 
excellent. The best picture in literature 
is given in William Stearns Davis’ novel, 
God Wills It. 

See Jerusalem; Saracens; Wind¬ 
mills; Richard I; Peter the LIermit; 
Lemming. 

Crusoe, Robinson, a character in an 
interesting story of the same name. See 
DeFoe; Selkirk. 


CRYSTAL PALACE—CUBA 


Crystal Palace, a building erected at 
Sydenham, a southern suburb of London, 
in 1854. It was built of materials from 
the buildings of the great exhibition of 
1851. The name is derived from the great 
quantity of glass used in the construction. 
The building is 1,600 feet long, 380 feet 
wide, and 200 feet high at the center. It 
cost about $4,500,000. It is now devoted 
to sculpture, architecture, painting, natural 
history, fossils, and manufactured articles. 
The building is surrounded by grounds, 
comprising 200 acres, adorned with trees, 
walks, statues, fountains, and flower gar¬ 
dens. The whole constitutes an instruct¬ 
ive combination of park and museum. 
See Skyscraper. 

Crystallography, the part of natural 
science having to do with crystals, the 
solids with plane surfaces into which all 
inorganic substances when solidifying tend 
to arrange themselves. Though these 
forms are almost innumerable, they natu¬ 
rally fall into six classes, determined by 
the relation of their axes: 

1. The Regular or Cubical, called also 
Isometric, with three equal axes at right 
angles, as common salt, or galena. 

2. The Tetragonal or Dimetric, with 
axes at right angles and with one longer 
or shorter than the others, as yellow prus- 
siate of potash. 

3. The Orthorhombic, or Trimetric, 
with axes all unequal but still at right 
angles, as saltpeter, or sulphur. 

4. The Monoclinic, with one inclined 
axis, as in borax, or copperas. 

5. The Triclinic, with all axes oblique, 
as in copper sulphate. 

6. The Hexagonal with three axes in 
the same plane, at angles of 60° and a 
fourth at right angles to this plane, as in 
some varieties of limestone. 

Cuba, the largest of the West India 
Islands. It is the largest fertile island in 
America. It lies between Florida and 
the Caribbean Sea, guarding the entrance 
to the Gulf of Mexico. At its nearest ap¬ 
proach it is less than a hundred miles from 
Key West, the extreme island of Florida. 
It is shaped “like the extended tongue of 
a woodpecker with a barb on the southern 
side of the ocean end.” The greatest 


length following the main curve is about 
800 miles. The width varies from 100 to 
25 miles. Its area is 44,000 square miles, 
slightly surpassed in size by Pennsylvania. 

Climate and Products. The interior 
of Cuba is mountainous, save that plains 
follow one or two of the rivers. The 
highest peak reaches 8,600 feet. The rivers 
are short and rapid. A number plunge 
through beautiful white limestone caverns. 
The coast is indented by deep, safe harbors. 
There are several hundred small islets 
about the coast. The climate is moist and, 
save in the mountains, torrid. The soil 
is rich. Nearly one-half of the total area 
is under cultivation. Cuba, Ceylon and 
Java not excepted, is the most productive 
island in the world. It leads the world 
in the cultivation of sugar-cane and to¬ 
bacco. In some years it produces half 
the world’s sugar. Cuban tobacco fetches 
a high price in the market. Bananas, 
oranges and lemons, pineapples, and figs 
flourish. Coffee and cotton are well suited 
to the climate and soil. Nearly one-half 
of the island is yet in forests, yielding 
cedar, ebony, lignum vitae, mahogany, 
pine, rosewood, and several dyewoods. The 
island has mineral wealth. Copper mines 
have been worked since 1524. Silver, lead, 
and iron are found in paying quantities. 
Soft coal, shading off into asphaltum. is 
abundant. 

History. Cuba was occupied by the 
Spaniards nearly a century before a perma¬ 
nent English colony had been planted on 
the Atlantic coast of the United States. In 
1519, though not the first settlement, Ha¬ 
vana was founded. It is situated on a fine 
harbor on the northern coast. Morro Cas¬ 
tle at the entrance was fortified in 1600. 
The harbor with * its fort was regarded 
as “the key to the New World.” Cuba 
became a source of revenue to Spain. 
When the South American countries threw 
off the yoke of Spain in 1820 the “ever 
faithful island” remained loyal, but later 
became dissatisfied with oppressive regula¬ 
tions, especially an act in 1825 placing 
Cuban lives and fortunes under the abso¬ 
lute rule of a military commander. 

Frequent uprisings were followed by 
cruel tortures and executions. During the 


CUBEB 


greatest of the outbreaks, 40,000 Cuban 
lives were lost and over 200,000 Spanish 
soldiers were carried away by yellow fever. 
The cost of this Cuban insurrection, includ¬ 
ing the loss of property, was reckoned at 
$300,000,000. At this time the South 
American Republics were anti-slavery. It 
was feared that independent Cuba would 
free her slaves. It has been charged that 
the pro-slavery interests of the United 
States prevented our helping Cuba to in¬ 
dependence. On the other hand, the anti¬ 
slavery sentiment in the United States op¬ 
posed the annexation of Cuba, because it 
would be admitted doubtless as a slave¬ 
holding state. So the “Gem of the An¬ 
tilles” had no help from the United States, 
and the Spaniards were left free to wreak 
their vengeance on the leaders of one out¬ 
break after another, and to continue the 
work of reducing one of the richest regions 
of the world into a jungle. 

In 1895 a last and a successful up¬ 
rising took place. The sympathies of the 
United States were with the Cubans. An 
American warship, the Maine, in the har¬ 
bor of Havana, was blown up supposedly by 
a mine. The United States declared war in 
behalf of the Cubans. “Remember the 
Maine!” became the watchword. American 
troops, including the Rough Riders under 
Roosevelt, invaded the island. The Amer¬ 
ican navy blockaded the ports, and Spain 
was forced to grant Cuban independence. 

Government and Population. At the 
close of the war the island was organized 
as a republic. A constitution resembling 
that of the United States, but with pe¬ 
culiar clauses authorizing the United States 
to act as its sponsor and defender in the 
eyes of the world, was adopted February 
21, 1901. Owing to disturbances it was 
necessary for the United States to intervene 
again; but in 1908 our troops again left 
Cuban soil, and it is hoped that the Cu¬ 
bans may govern themselves. There are 
six provinces, with a total population 
(1907) of 2,048,980, equal to that of Kan¬ 
sas or California. About three-tenths of 
the population are colored. Each province 
has a capital town of the name. Ha¬ 
vana opposite Key West is the chief city,— 
the capital of the nation. Its population 


is about 300,000. Santiago, opposite Ja¬ 
maica, is the second city in importance. 
Spanish is the official language. The pre¬ 
dominant religion is Catholic. 

Trade and Commerce. The close of 
the wars for independence found Cuba 
poor and depopulated. The United States 
gave aid in the last war, but requires Cu¬ 
ban products to pay so high a tariff on 
entering the United States that the indus¬ 
tries of the country have recovered less 
rapidly than was hoped. Nearly half of 
the Cuban purchases and three-fourths of 
the sales are made in the United States. 
The chief exports are sugar, rum, molasses, 
tobacco, cigars, bananas, pineapples, or¬ 
anges, lemons, tomatoes, potatoes, sweet po¬ 
tatoes, peppers, eggplant, okra, cocoanuts, 
figs, mangoes, mahogany, cedar, sponges, 
shells, horns, hides, hoofs, honey, and wax. 

Much progress has recently been made. 
The plantations have a less neglected look. 
One may now travel the length of the is¬ 
land by rail. Towns and cities have been 
placed in a more sanitary condition. The 
ravages of yellow fever have been stayed. 
A system of public schools has been in¬ 
troduced. 

Statistics. The following statistics 
are the latest to be had from trustworthy 


sources: 

Land area, square miles . 44,000 

Population (1910) 2,150,112 

Havana . 302,526 

Santiago de Cuba . 53,614 

Matanzas . 64,385 

Cienfuegos . 70,416 

Camaguey . 66,460 

Cardenas . 28,576 

Number provinces . 6 

Annual income . $2,900,000 

Bonded indebtedness .$50,000,000 

Horses . 523,702 

Mules . 50,000 

Cattle . 2,500,000 

Acres under plow . 869,733 

Value of sugar crop .$64,000,000 

Value of tobacco crop.$21,000,000 

Acres of sugar cane . 457,000 

Acres of tobacco . 84,000 

Acres of fruit. 15,000,000 

Species of native plants..... 3,500 

Miles of railway (1908) . 1,897 

Iron ore mined, tons . 6,000,000 

Teachers in public schools . 3,593 

Pupils enrolled . 143,000 


Cubeb, a climbing shrub of Java, New 
Guinea, and adjacent islands. It is closely 



























CUCKOO—CUCUMBER 


related to the peppers. When dried its 
berries resemble black pepper, except that 
they have short stems or stalks. Cubebs 
are administered for a number of ailments, 
and are smoked as a remedy for catarrh 
and asthma. See Pepper; Medicine. 

Cuckoo, a family of birds allied in 
some respects to the woodpecker. There 
are well on toward two hundred species of 
cuckoos, and thirty-five are 
found in the New World. 

Two toes are directed for¬ 
ward and two backward af¬ 
ter the manner of woodpeck¬ 
ers, but the cuckoos use 
their feet for grasping limbs 
rather than for climbing. 

The cuckoo of literature is a 
widely diffused bird, found 
in the northern part of the 
Old World in summer, and 
in India and northern Africa 
in winter. In England and 
temperate Europe its well 
known note is the harbinger 
of spring. 

The cuckoo is a grayish 
bird about fourteen inches in 
length. It lays an egg no 
larger than that of the skylark, and has 
incurred a bad reputation by neglecting 
to build a nest of its own. Single eggs 
are deposited stealthily in the nests of 
small birds to be hatched by hedge spar¬ 
rows, wagtails, skylarks, robins, thrushes, 
and buntings. The young cuckoo is all 
greed and appetite. It soon shoulders its 
foster brothers and sisters out of their own 
nest. The foster parents, the owners of 
the nest, work untiringly in their frantic 
attempts to keep its crying mouth full 
of worms. As soon as able to fly, it goes 
off and leaves them. The young cuckoo, 
therefore, though deserted by its own par¬ 
ents, is the type of ingratitude. 

Although outranked by the skylark and 
the nightingale, the cuckoo was one of the 
earliest songsters to attract the attention of 
English poets, because of its mysterious 
life. The following bit of lyric is of un¬ 
known date and authorship, but it precedes 
Chaucer by some centuries. With modern¬ 
ized spelling it runs as follows: 


Summer is a-coming too, 

Loud sings cuckoo. 

Groweth seed and bloweth mead 
And springeth the wood new, 

Sing cuckoo, cuckoo. 

The red-billed and the yellow-billed 
American cuckoos have better manners 
than their British cousin. They breed 
throughout the eastern part of North 
America and winter in the tropics. Both 


Yellow-billed cuckoo. 

lay from three to five greenish eggs in 
nests, usually resembling those of a dove, 
and feed their own young, chiefly with 
caterpillars. 

Many German homes contain specimens 
of the famous cuckoo clock. In place of 
striking, a clever imitation of the cuckoo 
calls the hour. 

Cucumber, with squashes and melons, 
a member of the gourd family. The gar¬ 
den cucumber is native to southern Asia, 
but is cultivated in gardens as far north 
as the center of England. Of late the 
market demand for fresh cucumbers has 
led to the investment of money in forcing 
houses in which cucumber vines are trained 
to run on frames beneath a glass roof. The 
cucumbers hang down from the vines in 
easy reach. A small house will raise a 
surprisingly large number of cucumbers 
for winter and spring market. Garden 
cucumbers require a rich, sunny spot. Seed 
should not be spared, as the young plants 
are especially subject to the attacks of in- 









CUD CHEWERS 


sects. The plant stops yielding as soon as 
a few cucumbers are allowed to turn yel¬ 
low. Young cucumbers may be put down 
in brine for salt pickles, and later the salt 
may be soaked out and the cucumbers 
placed in vinegar for sour pickles. Gher¬ 
kins are a small kind of cucumber suit¬ 
able for pickles. See Gourd; Vegetables. 

Cud Chewers, or Ruminants, an order 
of quadrupeds. All ruminants have a sin¬ 
gular faculty of chewing the cud. They 
gather their food, chiefly grasses, herbs, or 
twigs, hastily. Ruminants have four stom¬ 
achs. In swallowing they are able to 
admit food into either stomach at will. 
The first stomach is called the paunch. It 
receives vegetable matter, bruised at a first 
chewing. From the paunch food passes 
into the second or honeycomb bag, a small 
globular stomach, which seizes the food, 
moistens it, and presses it into little pellets 
or cuds. After gathering food for a time, 
the animal lies down or stands at rest, and 
raises these cuds into its mouth, and chews 
them in great apparent contentment. Food 
thus re-chewed descends into the third 
stomach, from which it proceeds to the 
fourth stomach, where true digestion takes 
place. In the young ruminants the fourth 
stomach is the largest of the four, so long 
as they continue to live on milk. The 
paunch is developed by pasturage. By 
chewing the cud an ox extracts about ten 
or twelve per cent more food from dry hay 
than a horse does. Cud chewers are divid¬ 
ed into four families. 

1. The ox family. 

a. Domestic cattle. 

b. The goat kind. 

c. The sheep kind. 

d. The antelopes. 

2. The giraffe family. 

3. The d$er family. 

4. The camel family. 

Cuirass. See Armor. 

Culloden, kul-16'den, a battlefield in 
the Highlands of Scotland, four miles 
east of Inverness. Here, April 27, 1746, 
Charles the Pretender and his Highland 
adherents made the last stand of the Stu¬ 
arts. They were scattered to the four 
winds by the English Duke of Cumber¬ 
land, Charles lay in hiding for weeks 


until he had opportunity to escape to 
France. He made no further attempt to 
secure the British crown. For the High¬ 
landers the day was one of disaster. Plun- 
dreds of their fighting men lay slain on 
the heath, and the coronach or wail for 
the dead was heard in every glen and 
mountain fastness. A monumental cairn 
marks the spot of the battle. See Scotland. 

Cumaean Sibyl. See Sibyls. 

Cumberland Road, a great national 
highway. It was projected in 1806 in Jef¬ 
ferson’s administration on the model of the 
great Roman roads. It was intended at 
first to run from Baltimore to the Ohio 
and was afterward extended. Between 
1806 and 1840 the general government ex¬ 
pended nearly $7,000,000 in laying out, 
grading, building bridges, and macadamiz¬ 
ing. The road ran from Baltimore west¬ 
ward through Fredericksburg, Cumberland, 
and Wheeling; through Ohio to Vandalia, 
Indiana—800 miles in all—where further 
construction was abandoned as unnecessary 
on account of the building of railways. 
The various portions of the road have been 
surrendered by the general government to 
the counties through which it passes. 
Though now almost forgotten, the Cum¬ 
berland road was one of the most famous 
stage roads in the world. A ride on the 
top of a coach, bowling swiftly through 
the mountains of western Maryland and 
West Virginia, is described by travelers as 
a trip not easily forgotten. See Road. 

Cummin. See Anise. 

Cumulus. See Cloud. 

Cuneiform (ku-ne'i-form) Writing, a 
primitive system of writing in use among 
the Chaldeans, Babylonians, and Assyri¬ 
ans. The name is derived from the Latin 
word cimeas, meaning wedge, and has 
reference to the triangular shape of the 
characters. The writer impressed his char¬ 
acters with a stylus on soft clay tablets 
which were afterward kiln baked. If stone 
was the material, the characters were cut 
with the chisel. For some account of the 
enormous number of tablets found in the 
ruins of ancient cities, see Babylon. 

Cupid, in Roman mythology, the god 
of love. He was the son of Mercury and 
Venus. The Romans identified with their 


CURATE—CURLING 


Cupid the Greek Eros and the legends 
concerning him. Cupid is usually repre¬ 
sented as a chubby, winged boy with a 
bow and quiver full of arrows, with which 
to pierce the hearts of his willing victims. 
Sometimes the ancients represented him as 
riding on a lion or a dolphin; sometimes 
as breaking the thunderbolts of Jupiter, 
which were ways of signifying his power. 
Cupid is usually spoken of as blind, or 
blindfolded. He figures in a large num¬ 
ber of legends. His name is of frequent 
occurrence in literature, and he has always 
been a favorite subject with sculptors and 
painters. Figures of, children, with or 
without wings, introduced into works of 
art are frequently called cupids without 
any mythological allusion. See Eros. 

Some Cupid kills with arrows, 

Some with traps. —Shakespeare. 

Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind, 
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind. 

—Shakespeare. 

Curate. See Episcopal Church. 

Curb. See Stock Exchange. 

Curculio. See Weevil. 

Curfew, a Norman French term mean¬ 
ing to cover the fire. It belongs to a time 
before the invention of matches, when fires 
were covered up with ashes to keep live 
coals over night. In the reign of William 
the Conqueror a bell, called the curfew 
bell, was rung at night, as a signal to 
cover up the fires and retire to rest. School 
readers formerly taught that the curfew 
was an oppressive measure intended to pre¬ 
vent the English people from sitting up 
and plotting treason; but it is now be¬ 
lieved that it was introduced in London, 
at least, as a measure of protection against 
fire. The ringing of the curfew bell is 
an excellent custom still adhered to in 
many parts of rural England. The usual 
hour is nine o’clock. During the past 
quarter of a century many cities and towns 
of the United States have passed what are 
known as curfew ordinances, requiring 
young people to leave the streets and re¬ 
tire to their homes at eight or nine in the 
evening, according to the season. When a 
town bell is not available, a few sharp 
strokes are given on the fire gong. The 
curfew ordinance meets with wide approv¬ 


al among those who believe that boys and 
girls should be at home after nightfall. It 
is believed that the universal adoption of 
this measure would do much to reduce 
juvenile vice, and to empty our reform 
schools. 

Curie. See Radium. 

Curlew, a shore bird of the snipe fam¬ 
ily. The curlew is a wading bird of 
marshy and upland places, where it se¬ 
cures snails, worms, crickets, grasshoppers, 
beetles, and crayfish. Of North American 
species, the jack-curlew breeds in British 
America and winters from the Gulf States 
to Patagonia. The long-billed curlew, a 
fine bird two feet high, has a curved bill 
six inches long. It is called the sickle-bill 
also. It probes the earth to six inches in 
search of food. In lighting the wings 
are lifted gracefully above the back. In 
Scotland the European curlew is called a 
whaup. See Snipe. 

’T is the place, and all around it, as of old, the 
curlews call, 

Dreary gleams about the moorland flying over 
Locksley Hall. —Tennyson, Locksley Hall. 

Curling, an ancient Scottish game 
played on the ice. A strip of smooth ice 
is chosen for a rink. Two marks called 
tees are located about forty yards apart. 
The game is played with smooth hemi¬ 
spherical stones, weighing from thirty-five 
to fifty pounds, fitted with stone or wooden 
handles. Each player has a pair of these 
stones, which he holds something like a 
flatiron. The opposing players stand at 
one tee and slide their stones with great 
force along the ice toward the other tee. 
As in bowls, quoits, and pitching horse¬ 
shoes, the stone which lies nearest the tee 
counts. No small part of the player’s skill 
lies in his ability to drive his opponent’s 
stone away from the tee and leave his own 
in position. The game is a popular one, 
not only in North Britain, but in Canada 
and in some parts of the United States. 
International games, or bonspiels, are not 
infrequently played, as between St. Paul 
and Winnipeg. 

Curling is attended with a great deal of 
jollity and merrymaking. The game may 
be played by any even number of players 
from two up to sixteen. In Scotland, es- 


CURRANT—CURRENTS, OCEAN 


pecially, contests between parishes are a 
regular winter event looked forward to by 
young and old; while crack teams from 
different parts of the country meet each 
other for final games. A code of rules 
has grown up to fit every conceivable emer¬ 
gency, as in the case of football, base¬ 
ball, and golf. 

The teams of curlers usually dress in 
Highland costume, at least in Highland 
caps, and as a sign of fellowship they 
carry the brooms with which they are 
wont to sweep the ice when it seems that 
a stone is not likely to. go quite far enough. 

Currant, a well known garden fruit. 
The currant is closely allied to the goose¬ 
berry, but it is smooth and more juicy. 
A number of kinds, both red and black, 
grow wild; but the red currant (ribes 
rubrum) and the black currant are the 
currants of the garden. It is a native of 
cool climates, but may be cultivated far¬ 
ther south in shaded places, such as or¬ 
chards. The Gulf States are too warm, 
but with mulching, currants do remarkably 
well in the dry climate of the plains. 
Currants are hardy and endure neglect, 
but respond quickly to rich soil and cul¬ 
tivation. Currants are started by cuttings 
about ten inches long, planted with two or 
three buds above ground. Young wood is 
more productive than old. The old stems 
should be cut out as fast as young stems 
offer to take their place. Allow from six 
to eight stems to grow in each clump. 
Currant growers find it profitable to set 
new plants each year and root out those 
that exceed eight years. The currant worm 
is a great pest and can be fought to best 
advantage by sprinkling with a teaspooii- 
ful of powdered hellebore to a gallon of 
water. Currant borers can be gotten rid 
of best by digging up and burning the 
plants. Care should be used to start again 
with healthy cuttings. The name of the 
garden currant is derived from a similarity 
in size to the eastern currant, for which 
see the following article. 

Currant, a Grecian raisin, produced by 
drying the small, sweet, seedless grape of 
that country. These grape currants are 
one of the chief crops of Greece and are 
much in demand by makers of cakes and 


puddings. Currants of this sort are really 
Grecian raisins. They get their name 
from Corinth, the city that sent most of 
them to market. Corinth has been changed 
to currant, much as “Worcester” has be¬ 
come “Wooster.” 

Currency. See Money; Greenbacks; 
Coin ; Bank. 

Currents, Ocean. The waters of the 
ocean apart from the movement called 
tides, are in constant motion. At varying 
depths portions of the water seem to move 
more rapidly than the main body, much 
as if they were flowing from a higher to a 
lower level. These streams, flowing in 
definite directions and with a fairly uni¬ 
form velocity, are called currents. The 
cause of ocean currents was long unknown 
and is yet, to some extent, a matter of the¬ 
ory. It is conceded generally that the chief 
causes are winds and the unequal heating 
of the waters in polar and equatorial 
regions. Surface currents have in general 
the direction of the prevailing winds. 
Small currents, formed as the water drifts 
before the wind, may be seen along the 
coasts of lakes. Many ocean currents be¬ 
gin in a similar way. The differences in 
temperature cause movements slower than 
those of the surface current but quite as 
important. As the waters near the equator 
become warmed they expand and a flow 
toward the poles sets in, while the cold 
and heavier waters of the polar regions 
settle, and flow as undercurrents toward the 
equator. The result is a constant circula¬ 
tion. The direction of both surface and 
deep-sea currents, however, is modified by 
the winds, by the continents which inter¬ 
rupt and turn them aside, and by the rota¬ 
tion of the earth on its axis. The earth’s ro¬ 
tation affects the currents of the sea much 
as it does those of the air. By referring to 
the article on Winds, an explanation of this 
action will be found. This gives rise to one 
of the main effects of currents, for we find 
western coasts warmer than eastern in the 
same latitude, and this in instances where 
other causes are insufficient to account for 
the difference. A good example is found 
by comparing the east and west coasts of 
Greenland, the latter being much the more 
habitable of the two. Were it not for the 


CURTIS, GEORGE WILLIAM 


equalizing effect of this interchange of wa¬ 
ters between north and south, the ice caps 
of the polar seas would extend into temper¬ 
ate regions, while the heat of the equatorial 
waters would cause many forms of life to 
become extinct. 

The physiographic effects of currents are 
less than those of waves, the greater force 
of the waves causing more erosion than can 
be effected by the slower movement of the 
currents. The currents, however, transport 
large quantities of material to great dis¬ 
tances. Shells of marine animals native to 
the Caribbean Sea are found on the Caro¬ 
lina coast, brought thither by the waters of 
the Gulf Stream. Quantities of coral polyps 
who are building lands in the sea continual¬ 
ly, are supplied with food by the various 
ocean currents. These are but instances of 
the great work done by these rivers of the 
sea. 

Among the many ocean currents of im¬ 
portance a few may be mentioned by name. 
The Equatorial Current, nearly 1,000 miles 
broad, flows in a westerly direction, before 
the prevailing winds of that region, at a 
rate of ten or fifteen miles a day, and 
circles the earth except where the conti¬ 
nents intervene. Meeting the continents 
on their eastern coasts this current, both 
in the Atlantic and in the Pacific, divides, 
flowing to north and south. In the Atlantic 
the northern and larger of these branches 
flows as a slow drift, partly into the Carib¬ 
bean Sea, partly west of that body of water, 
between the West Indies and into the open 
sea. The stream which enters the Carib¬ 
bean flows next into the Gulf of Mexico 
and emerges as the Gulf Stream. This 
stream is regarded as the most important 
of Ocean Currents and has been more 
thoroughly studied than any other, this 
study resulting, however, in considerable 
difference of opinion as to what is actually 
accomplished by the current. As it leaves 
the Florida strait it is a narrow, deep cur¬ 
rent of a peculiar blue color readily dis¬ 
tinguished from the lighter water through 
which it flows. Its velocity, varying with 
the winds, the seasons, the age and passage 
of the moon, is from three and one-half to 
five and one-half miles an hour. As the 

Gulf Stream advances to the north along 
11-22 


the American coast its velocity decreases. 
In the latitude of Cape Hatteras it turns, 
slowing toward the east, growing broader 
and shallower. It is divided by the Euro¬ 
pean coast, a part turning southward again 
and the rest flowing in a northeasterly di¬ 
rection, past Scandinavia, where its warmth 
keeps the port of Hammerfest free from 
ice, to the Arctic Ocean. 

So great difficulty attends the study of 
ocean currents, so many and such varied 
circumstances modify their direction, ve¬ 
locity, depth, and temperature, as well as 
their actual results, that the subject, as a 
science, is still in its infancy. Their in¬ 
fluence on physiography, and on climate, is 
sufficient to make the subject of interest, 
but when their influence upon practical 
navigatition is considered the matter be¬ 
comes one of vital importance. 

Curtis, George William (1824-1892), 
an American editor, lecturer, and author. 
He was a native of Providence, Rhode 
Island. His reputation was first won 
through his sketches of travel, Nile Notes 
of a Howadji, written while traveling in 
Egypt and Syria. For many years, includ¬ 
ing the period of the Civil War, Curtis 
was political editor of Harper’s Weekly, 
which he made a powerful supporter of 
the Union cause. For many years he was 
editor of the “Easy Chair” in Harper’s 
Magazine . It has been said that in this 
work “his province and his influence re¬ 
sembled those of Addison and Steele in the 
best issues of the Spectator.” It is by his 
chatty notes and observances in the “Easy 
Chair” department that Mr. Curtis is best 
known. Among his later books are Lotus 
Eating, Potiphar Papers, Prue and /. Mr. 
Curtis was also known as a successful lec¬ 
turer. He delivered notable memorial ora¬ 
tions on Burns, Bryant, Irving, Lowell, 
and others. 

In the “Easy Chair” of Harper’s Magazine, 
Mr. Curtis displayed the highest qualities of an 
essayist. Comment on art, music, literature, cur¬ 
rent events, politics, society, was here set forth, 
month by month, in graceful and flexible style, 
animated by genial humor, often by keen satire, 
but always regulated by the purest taste. So 
nice was his sense of literary proportion, that 
local and ephemeral circumstances, preserved in 
these monthly records, have keen interest for the 
reader of to-day.—Shaw. 


CURTIUS—CUSTER 


Curtius, ker'shi-us, Marcus, a hero of 
Roman legends. The story runs that in 
the year 362 B. C. a chasm opened in 
the forum, or marketplace, at Rome. The 
soothsayers were consulted and predicted 
great calamity, but declared that the 
chasm would close and calamity be averted 
if that which constituted the glory of the 
state were thrown into the abyss. While 
discussion was in progress as to what con¬ 
stituted the glory of the state, Curtius 
appeared, mounted on horseback and shin¬ 
ing in armor. He exclaimed, “Rome has 
nothing more precious than arms and val¬ 
or,” and leaped into the chasm, which im¬ 
mediately closed. 

Curzon, George Nathaniel, Lord 

(1859-), an English statesman. He was 
born at Kedleston. His education was re¬ 
ceived at Oxford, and in 1885 he became 
private secretary to the Marquis of Salis¬ 
bury. From 1885 to 1898 he represented 
the Southport division of Lancashire in 
Parliament, acting as under-secretary for 
India in 1892, and under-secretary of state 
for foreign affairs in 1895. In 1898 he was 
made Viceroy and Governor-general of In¬ 
dia, and at the same time raised to the Irish 
peerage, with the title of Baron Curzon of 
Kedleston. His administration was accept¬ 
able in India and also to the home govern¬ 
ment. He furthered the cause of educa¬ 
tion, and instituted many reforms in the 
management of railways, post and tele¬ 
graph services, and other government mo¬ 
nopolies. In 1905 he resigned in conse¬ 
quence of disagreements with Lord 
Kitchener concerning the system of dual 
control in the Indian army. In 1908 Lord 
Curzon was elected a representative peer 
of Ireland and took his station in the House 
of Lords. He is the author of several 
books, Russia in Central Asia, Persia and 
the Persian Question, Problems in the Far 
East. 

Custer, Gen. George Armstrong 

(1839-1876), an American soldier. Hav¬ 
ing finished his course at West Point he 
was sent from Washington to Gen. 
McDowell with dispatches just in time 
to take part in the battle of Bull Run. 
He attracted the attention of Gen. McClel¬ 
lan and was made an aid-de-camp. Later 


he became a dashing cavalry leader in the 
Shenandoah Valley. He was first over the 
river at Chickahominy, and had two horses 
shot under him at Gettysburg. He was 
promoted rapidly for bravery, and was a 
brigadier general four years after gradua¬ 
tion. For a short time after the Civil War 
he did unwelcome patrolling in Kentucky 
and other states, but from 1866 to the time 
of his death his name is associated with 
those of Miles and Crook as an Indian 
fighter on the plains. An expedition to the 
Black Hills is fittingly remembered in Cus¬ 
ter and Custer County, South Dakota. His 
headquarters were at Fort Lincoln, oppo¬ 
site Bismarck, for several winters. In the 
summer of 1873 his regiment was detailed 
to guard the engineers who were locating 
the extension of the Northern Pacific 
Railway from Bismarck through the Bad 
Lands to the Yellowstone Valley. 

In 1876 the Sioux Indians, who saw 
that the advance of the railroad was de¬ 
priving them of their last hunting grounds, 
grew ugly; and the war department de¬ 
cided upon a general campaign in the Yel¬ 
lowstone country. Gen. Sheridan directed 
Crook to lead a column from the south 
against the villages of chief Crazy Horse; 
and Terry, with a force including Custer 
and his command, was dispatched against 
chiefs Sitting Bull and Rain-in-the-Face. 
Gen. Custer accompanied Terry by way 
of the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers 
to the mouth of the Rosebud, when they 
were joined by a column from the west 
under Gen. Gibbon. 

The campaign was planned well enough. 
Three columns were to converge in the 
Yellowstone country and crush the In¬ 
dians. Either column was supposed to 
be strong enough to disperse any force the 
Indians might collect. But no one had 
foreseen that so many dissatisfied braves 
would leave the reservations and join the 
hostiles. LTnknowm to Gen. Terry, Crook 
was repulsed, and retired to wait for rein¬ 
forcements. Gibbon was sent south from 
the Yellowstone up one valley, Custer was 
sent up another searching for the Indians. 
Custer followed a fresh Indian trail up 
the Rosebud and crossed over into the 
head waters of the Little Big Horn. Here 


CUSTOMS—CUTLERY 


N 


he came upon the Indians, and, not dream¬ 
ing they were in such force, he divided 
his command, ordered one-half under Ma¬ 
jor Reno to attack in the rear while he 
made a bold dash for the front. Reno 
soon found that the Indian camp was large, 
and drew off to a safe distance and forti¬ 
fied himself, leaving Custer to make the 
best of it. Had Reno attacked vigorous¬ 
ly it is thought the Indians might have been 
stampeded; but, be that as it may, the 
wily savages surrounded Custer’s band 
with din, whoop, and blazing Winchesters, 
and wiped out “Yellow Hair” and his 
troopers to a man! Instead of a few hun¬ 
dred warriors, the Sioux were 2,500 to 
3,000 strong. The troops under Crook 
and Terry united later, and drove the In¬ 
dians to their reservations or north into 
Canada, but it was too late to save Custer. 

Longfellow has commemorated Custer’s 
last battle by a poem entitled “The Re¬ 
venge of Rain-in-the-Face,” beginning 

In that desolate land and lone 

Where the Big Horn and the Yellowstone. 

The battle ground is now occupied by a 
fitting monument. In Custer, Custer Coun¬ 
ty, and Custer Creek of southeastern Mon¬ 
tana, the name of the gallant soldier has 
found a lasting record. Sitting Bull, Cus¬ 
ter’s old enemy, lies in the military bury¬ 
ing ground at Fort Yates. Boots and Sad¬ 
dles, by Mrs. Custer, who accompanied her 
husband on many of his less important 
expeditions, is a readable account of ex¬ 
perience. 

Customs, taxes collected on foreign 
goods. The United States maintains cus¬ 
tom houses or offices at all our principal 
ports and wherever railroads cross the bor 
der. All imported goods are examined 
and duties are collected according to the 
tariff laws established from time to time 
by Congress. Some commodities, as ani¬ 
mals for breeding purposes, hard coal, tea, 
coffee, dyewoods, newspapers, magazines, 
printing paper, raw silk, and uncured furs, 
are entirely free. Others, as butter, 6 
cents a pound; soft coal, 67 cents a ton; 
honey, 20 cents a gallon; iron screws, 12 
cents a pound; lard, 2 cents a pound; hay, 
$4 a ton; matches, 8 cents a gross; opium, 
SI a pound; wool, 12 cents a pound; and 


eggs, 5 cents a dozen, pay a specific duty 
according to weight or measure. Others 
again, as pins, 35 cents on the dollar of 
value; railroad ties, 20 cents; sealskin 
sacques, 35 cents; watches, 40 cents; jew¬ 
elry, 60 cents; glassware, 60 cents; and 
musical instruments, 45 cents, pay duty 
according to their money value. Some ar¬ 
ticles pay a double tariff, both specific and 
ad valorem, that is, according to weight 
and value. Carpets, knit goods, cigars, 
silks, yarn, and clothing belong here. 

For the convenience of merchants, cus¬ 
tom houses are maintained at many in¬ 
terior points to which foreign goods may 
be sent in bond, that is to say, in sealed 
cars or packages to be opened and ex¬ 
amined on reaching their destination. 

In 1911 the customs receipts of the 
United States were $314,497,000, as 
against $386,875,000 from other sources. 
Until the past few years rather more than 
half of our national income has been de¬ 
rived from customs. The total receipts 
from customs from the organization of the 
government in 1789 to January 1, 1906, 
were $9,704,570,963. 

The collection of customs is in charge 
of the Treasury Department. The most 
important custom house in the United 
States is that of New York. The building 
cost $10,000,000. The collector has a sal¬ 
ary of $12,000 a year. Several subordi¬ 
nates receive half as much. The receipts 
are larger than those of all the other cus¬ 
tom houses combined. See Commerce. 

Cuticle. See Skin. 

Cutlery, edged instruments. The term 
is akin to colter, from the Latin culter, 
meaning a knife. No doubt prehistoric 
man used the sliver of a bone or the splin¬ 
ter of a bamboo for many purposes for 
which we use a knife. The most primi¬ 
tive edged tools found in caves and burial 
places are sharp-edged flakes of flint, ob¬ 
sidian, or similar stones. The first metal 
knives and daggers were made of bronze. 
Later came iron instruments, and, last of 
all, came steel. The ancient Greeks and 
Romans understood the use of steel; yet 
as late as the beginning of the Christian 
era surgeons as well as warriors used 
bronze cutlery. Both swords and lancets 





CUTTER—CUTTLEFISH 


of bronze have been found in the excava¬ 
tions of Pompeii. Among the celebrated 
swords of the Middle Ages were the Da¬ 
mascus blades made in Syria, and the 
sword blades of Toledo, Spain. Sheffield, 
England, was noted as a center of the cut¬ 
lery business as early as the time of Chau¬ 
cer, one of whose characters bore a Shef¬ 
field whittle in his hose. Sheffield is still 
the great center of table and pocket cut¬ 
lery. Birmingham leads in the making 
of swords and implements. The jointed 
knife, now known as a jackknife, is said 
to have been introduced into England 
from the Low Countries in the reign of 
Elizabeth. The spring back was invented 
a century later. 

The making of a good blade, whether 
for a knife or a razor, is an art in itself. 
Forging, hardening, tempering, grinding, 
and polishing have been reduced to a sys¬ 
tem; so that, of a score of knives or ra¬ 
zors of a given brand, especially of more 
expensive makes, there is little difference 
in quality. 

The term cutlery is somewhat elastic. 
Table knives, with dull edges, and forks, 
with no edge at all, are included with 
clasp knives, razors, scissors, and similar 
articles under the name of cutlery; while 
sickles, scythes, and a great number of 
other sharp-edged tools are considered im¬ 
plements, or else they are grouped with 
surgical instruments, pruning knives, 
butchers’ and shoemakers’ knives, chisels, 
and augurs, under the head of edged tools. 

In keeping with their usual reputation 
for inventive genius, American manufac¬ 
turers have introduced many improved 
methods in the making of tools, knives, 
and razors. American cutlery now ranks 
with the best European makes, and some 
lines find a large European market. The 
business of making cutlery is now an im¬ 
portant one. The following statistics are 
taken from the United States census re¬ 
port and make it clear how valuable this 
industry has become: 


Number of factories . 309 

Capital employed . $16,532,383 

Wage earners . 12,069 

Annual wages . $5,673,619 

Cost of steel and other material. $5,116,042 

Wholesale value of cutlery. $14,881,478 


See Sheffield; Tools; Toledo; 
Sword. 

Cutter. See Sled. 

Cuttlefish, a well known mollusk with¬ 
out an external shell. The cuttlefish is 
known to zoologists as a cephalopod. It 
is related to the squid and the octopus. 
The body is oval, but is somewhat flat¬ 
tened. A thin flap 6f skin like a frilled 
fin runs down each side. The animal has 
tw r o prominent eyes. The mouth is sur¬ 
rounded by eight short arms and two long 
tentacles, or feelers. Each arm carries 
four rows of raised suckers. The two 
long arms, or tentacles, terminate in cir¬ 
cular, saucer-shaped suckers. The cuttle¬ 
fish uses these arms to attach itself to ob¬ 
jects and to seize prey. The cuttlefish 
“walks” by laying hold of stones and oth¬ 
er objects with its suckers and dragging the 
body about. By expelling water forcibly 
from a tube beneath the head, the animal 
is able to dart backward with unexpected 
rapidity. 

The common cuttlefish of the British 
coast is a pest to fishermen. It ruins the 
fish in their nets and is difficult to catch. 
When alarmed the animal ejects an inky 
liquid which discolors the water for yards, 
and enables the cuttlefish to escape unseen. 
This liquid is the sepia ink of commerce, 
so indispensable to draftsmen. An inter¬ 
nal shell at the back of the body is the 
cuttlefish bone fed canaries. It is also 
crushed to form a powder, called pounce, 
which was shaken on a newly written page 
to dry the ink before blotters were invented. 
Pounce is still used for tooth powder, and 
in the making of molds for silver castings. 
Clusters of cuttlefish eggs are cast ashore 
by the waves and are sometimes called sea 
grapes. 

A very curious habit of the cuttlefish 
is the way it changes its color. This it 
can do at will. If it happens to find itself 
on a sandy bed, where the pebbles are va¬ 
riously colored, yellow and black, it can 
change its color so that it takes a keen 
eye to distinguish the animal from its sur¬ 
roundings. If it moves into a region where 
dark rocks abound, the little spots, specks, 
or stripes with which it was adorned a half- 
hour before disappear, and a dark, nearly 








CUTWORM—CYBELE 


black animal is seen. These sudden changes 
in color are brought about by means of 
large cells in the skin, which are filled 
with coloring matter; as these cells con¬ 
tract or expand, the color of the animal 
changes. 

See Squid; Octopus. 

Cutworm, the caterpillar of certain 
nocturnal or owlet moths. The eggs are 
laid in midsummer. During the autumn 
vegetation is so plentiful and the caterpil¬ 
lars so small that they attract no notice; 
but they stay in the ground over winter and 
commit frightful ravages in the spring. The 
common cutworm crawls about chiefly at 
night in search of a tender meal, and cuts 
off a young plant at the very surface of 
the ground. During the daytime they may 
be found coiled up comfortably in the 
ground near by. When night arrives the 
cutworm may feed again on the stub of 
the same plant, or it may pull the top 
into the ground for additional meals; but 
the chances are that it will cut off a plant 
or two each night until the stems are too 
old and tough for that kind of work. En¬ 
tire fields of beans, peas, onions, and corn, 
or melon vines, may be swept away in a 
few nights. For a few garden vegetables 
it is quite possible to insert old cans around 
choice plants, and to search the cutworms 
out each morning. The earlier, the more 
easily they are located. Gardeners say 
that holes a few inches deep, made with 
the handle of a hoe, make good traps. In 
hunting for a place to hide at daylight 
the worm falls in, and may be taken in 
the morning hours before he climbs up 
the steep sides and gets out again. Gar¬ 
dens dressed heavily with barnyard manure 
are especially subject to cutworms. 

Cuvier, kii-ve-a', Georges (1769- 
1832), a noted French scientist. He was 
educated at Stuttgart. After a term of 
service as a tutor in Normandy, he was 
invited in 1795 to Paris to a position from 
which he was soon transferred to a chair 
of zoology in the Garden of Plants. Here 
he began at once what was destined to 
become the largest natural history collec¬ 
tion in Europe. Cuvier was honored with 
membership in the scientific societies of 
France, and became a leading spirit. Un¬ 


der Napoleon he was instrumental in the 
founding of academies in newly attached 
territory. From this time on, save during 
the reign of Charles X, he held high of¬ 
fice. He was appointed minister of the 
interior just before his death. At his death 
he was considered the most eminent natu¬ 
ralist in Europe. 

Cuvier’s service to science is a classifi¬ 
cation of animals which is followed by 
scientists to the present day. In his Ani¬ 
mal Kingdom, he classified all animals ac¬ 
cording to the arrangement of their bones 
or hard parts, rather than according to 
their appearance or size. His chief headings 
were Vertebrates, Articulates, Mollusks, and 
Radiates. His works are a mine of infor¬ 
mation in natural history, and “afford the 
strongest arguments in favor of the theory 
of a progressive series of animals, advanc¬ 
ing from the most simple to the most com¬ 
plex forms of organizations.” The chalk 
basin in which Paris is situated supplied 
Cuvier with a variety of interesting fossils. 
He is regarded as the father of the study 
of paleontology, or the science of fossil 
life. He was prominent, too, in the science 
of comparative anatomy. He taught, for 
instance, that the flipper of a seal, the wing 
of a bat, the wing of a bird, the fore-leg 
of a horse, and the arm of a man are one 
and the same organ modified by circum¬ 
stances. He wrote scientific papers innu¬ 
merable. His published works reached 
many volumes. 

Cybele, sib'e-le, or sib-e'le, in classical 
mythology, the “Great Mother of the 
Gods.” Her worship seems to have origi¬ 
nated in Phrygia. Her proper name was 
Agdistes, but, as she was the goddess of 
caves, mountains, and the haunts of wild 
animals, she came to be called Cybele, the 
Phrygian word for caves. Her priests 
were called Corybantes, and her rites in¬ 
cluded wild dances accompanied with drum 
and fife. She was early identified with the 
Greek Rhea, and is sometimes called Rhea 
Cybele. The Romans identified her with 
their Ops, and used both names—Ops and 
Cybele. According to the old legend Cy¬ 
bele was the daughter of Maeon, king of 
Phrygia. Maeon, vexed that the child was 
not a boy, exposed her on Mount Cybelus. 


CYCLADES—CYCLONE 


There the infant was nourished by pan¬ 
thers and lions, and later was cared for 
by the wives of herdsmen. Grown to 
womanhood, she invented the fife and drum, 
and by their aid healed diseases of men 
and beasts. She became enamored of Atys, 
a beautiful youth. Her parents now recog¬ 
nized and received her, but her father was 
displeased with her lover, and had him exe¬ 
cuted, causing Cybele to become demented. 

Among the Greeks, Cybele was regarded 
as the wife of Cronos and mother of the 
Olympian gods. She symbolized the fruit¬ 
fulness of the earth. She was the goddess 
of vine-growing, agriculture, and town 
life. During the Second Punic War, the 
Sibylline Fates prophesied that if Cybele’s 
image were brought to Rome, it would ex¬ 
pel a common foe. This image was nothing 
but a dark, quadrangular, meteoric stone 
in a cave in the mountains of Phrygia. It 
was brought to Rome, and thus the wor¬ 
ship of Cybele was introduced among the 
Romans. She was. later identified with the 
Roman Ops, goddess of plenty. 

Cybele is represented in ancient art as 
a matronly woman, usually seated, with 
lions at her side. Sometimes she wears 
a mural crown, and a veil is draped about 
her head, symbolizing the mysterious in 
nature. Other emblems are a staff, a drum, 
ears of corn, the sun and moon in either 
hand. Occasionally she is pictured as rid¬ 
ing in a chariot drawn by lions, and bear¬ 
ing a thunderbolt in her hand. These 
are all symbolic of power, and of Cybele’s 
aid in advancing civilization. 

See Atalanta ; Atys. 

Cyclades, the principal group of islands 
in the Aegean Sea. They are twelve in 
number. The name is Grecian, and is 
derived from the same source as cycle, 
bicycle, etc. It was given because the 
islands were thought to form a ring about 
Delos. The islands are still known as 
the Cyclades, and form a department of 
modern Greece. The islands are volcanic. 
The inhabitants are engaged in fishing and 
in raising olives and grapes. The goat 
is the chief domestic animal. The capital 
is Hermopolis. Area, 928 square miles. 
The population of the Cyclades in 1907 
was about 130,000. 


Cyclamen, sik'la-men, a beautiful 
greenhouse flower widely introduced from 
Persia. The flower scapes and leaves 
spring from a tuber. The leaves are heart- 
shaped and are beautifully variegated. The 
petals bend sharply backward, giving the 
flower at first glimpse somewhat the ap¬ 
pearance of a violet. The petals vary in 
color from white to rose. The common 
varieties are scentless. The cyclamen is 
raised chiefly from seed. The seed appears 
to require two months to germinate, but in 
reality it produces a small corm before 
leaves appear. The genus belongs to the 
primrose family. See Primrose. 

Cyclom'eter, an instrument which meas¬ 
ures and records the distance traveled by 
a wheeled vehicle. It came into common 
use with the bicycle and under various 
names such as odometer, auto-meter, and 
speedometer, is considered essential to any 
completely equipped automobile. These 
instruments look something like small 
clocks on whose dial one may read the dis¬ 
tances from numbers which are moved by 
a train of wheels inside. They have reached 
a high degree of perfection, some of them 
having clock attachments, and indicating 
the speed in miles per hour and the total 
distance traveled, as well as that of the in¬ 
dividual trip. 

Cyclone, a whirlwind on a vast scale. 
As now used by scientists, the term is to 
be distinguished with care. The “western 
cyclone,” a violent, destructive whirlwind 
of the Mississippi Valley, should be called 
a tornado; the still larger, violent, destruc¬ 
tive whirlwind of the West Indies and the 
Atlantic is a hurricane; the very similar 
whirlwind of the East Indies, the Philip¬ 
pines, and the Pacific is called a typhoon. 
In the sense that a cyclone is a whirling 
and revolving wind, it cannot be denied 
that all three of these winds, the tornado, 
the hurricane, and the typhoon, are cy¬ 
clones ; but it is convenient and now cus¬ 
tomary to reserve the term cyclone for vast 
circular movements of air, hundreds of 
miles in diameter, that are taking place 
all the time, and are matters of every day 
experience. 

Confining our discussion to North Amer¬ 
ica, we may say, to start with, that our 


CYCLONE 


ordinary breezes, calms, and winds are but 
parts of a cyclone, and that a cyclone is 
simply an ordinary wind. The prevailing 
movement of air in the north temperate 
zone is from the west. If the surface of 
the United States and southern Canada 
were a low, flat plain, with the lines of 
equal heat running uniformly and perma¬ 
nently along the parallels of latitude, we 
should have, so far as local conditions gov¬ 
ern, monotonous westerly winds the year 
around. As a matter of fact, the air in 
our belt travels steadily in an easterly or 
northeasterly direction, but it does so in 
vast swirls that follow each-other eastward 
at intervals of from three to seven days. 
They travel across the continent at a rate 
of from 500 to 1,000 miles a day. These 
swirls or cyclones account for the different 
directions of wind. As the air moves in a 
whirl it is evident that an east wind in one 
edge of a cyclone must be a west wind in 
the opposite edge of the same cyclone. If 
the wind in the east edge of a cyclone is 
from the south, the wind in the west edge 
of the same swirl must be from the north. 
If a locality be in the pathway of the 
center of a cyclone, it is evident that the 
wind for that locality must change in di¬ 
rection as the cyclone advances. 

The writer recalls a personal observa¬ 
tion of this sort at Fargo in the Red River 
Valley one midwinter. As the evening of 
a fine day drew on, a furious south wind 
sprang up and brought a heavy fall of damp 
snow. The flakes fell in rags, such as Villon 
describes as falling in Paris. The town went 
to sleep in a warm, blinding snowstorm. 
The next morning the air was calm, the 
sun was shining, and the world lay still 
and white. At eventide again, a high wind 
was raging, and the air was filled with fine 
icy crystals, this time from the north. It 
seemed as though the wet, clinging, flaky 
snow from the south, and the fine, icy snow 
from the north, with a calm between, were 
the eastern edge, the western edge, and the 
central portion of a cyclone moving toward 
the Atlantic coast. By getting reports 
from all parts of a cyclone, the United 
States Weather Bureau is able to forecast 
the weather within the area occupied by 
the cvclone. It is essential to understand 


that the direction of a cyclone as a whole 
is a different thing from the direction 
of a particular part of the cyclone. The 
four quarters of a wagon tire are moving 
upward and forward, downward and back¬ 
ward, but the wheel as a whole is moving 
forward. One edge of a swirl in a stream 
is moving downward, and the opposite 
edge is moving upward, but the swirl as 
a whole is going down stream. 

If the reader has gained a notion of cir¬ 
cular winds on a large scale traveling east¬ 
ward, he is ready for the notion that the 
direction of a cyclone current is spiral, 
rather than circular. The origin of a cy¬ 
clone is not altogether clear, but, however 
that may be, the center of the whirl is 
an area of low barometric pressure, an 
area in which the air is less dense and 
toward which the air is rushing to even 
up the pressure. This combination of a 
circular direction and a direction toward 
the center gives the cyclonic current more 
or less of a spiral movement toward the 
center. This increase of density is likely 
to be accompanied by rainfall or snow¬ 
fall. The area in which this precipitation 
occurs is known as a cyclonic storm. The 
storm area is much smaller than the entire 
cyclone. If the observer will stand with 
his back to the wind—this for a wind or 
a breeze in the northern hemisphere—the 
center of the cyclone will be on the left 
hand. If he remember that the center is 
traveling eastward, he can locate the entire 
cyclone in a general w r ay. Corresponding 
to cyclonic movements of air about centers 
of low pressure, we have also cyclonic 
movements around centers of great density 
—centers of high pressure. Under these 
conditions the currents wind spirally from 
the central area outward. Such an area 
of cyclonic movement is called an anti-cy¬ 
clone. An area of high pressure, the den¬ 
sity of which is undergoing decrease by 
reason of an anti-cyclonic movement, is an 
area of fine weather. 

Put in another way, we may say that as 
the density of the air in an area increases, 
its capacity to hold moisture decreases. The 
central area of a cyclone is an area then 
of probable precipitation. On the other 
hand, the capacity of air to hold moisture 


CYCLOPS—CYNIC 


increases with increasing rarity. The cen¬ 
tral area of an anti-cyclone, therefore, is 
likely to be an area of fine weather. As a 
falling barometer indicates the approach of 
a cyclonic center, it also indicates a proba¬ 
bility of rain. In like manner, a rising 
barometer indicates the approach of an 
area of anti-cyclonic air, and probable fair 
weather. Our cyclones originate in the 
southwest and in -the northwest, or else 
they come from the Pacific. 

Cyclops, si'klops, in Greek mythology, 
a giant with a single circular eye in the 
middle of his forehead. The word Cy¬ 
clops means “round-eyed.” There seem 
to be several distinct legends. According 
to one account, there were three Titanic 
Cyclops, sons of Heaven and Earth. They 
labored in Mt. Aetna under the direction 
of Vulcan, forging the thunderbolts of 
Zeus, the helmet of Pluto, and the trident 
of Poseidon. 

In the adventures of Ulysses, Homer de¬ 
scribes a race of one-eyed Cyclops, who 
lived solitarily in the caves of Sicily, rear¬ 
ing sheep and goats. When Ulysses and a 
number of his companions applied to one of 
them, Polyphemus, for aid, the Cyclops 
shut them up in his cave with his flocks, 
closing the entrance at night with a huge 
rock that twenty men could not have rolled 
away from the door. In the morning he 
sent his flocks out to feed, but guarded 
the doorway, so that his prisoners might 
not escape. At each meal he devoured 
two of them. Ulysses tried to pacify the 
giant by giving him a bottle of wine 
which he had hoarded for an emergency. 
The only satisfaction he obtained, however, 
was a promise that he should not be eaten 
until the last. Becoming desperate, he laid 
plans with his companions; and that night, 
while Polyphemus lay asleep, he placed the 
end of his staff in the fire until it was a 
glowing coal. This he thrust into the gi¬ 
ant’s only eye, depriving him of sight, and 
causing him to howl with pain. Polyphe¬ 
mus groped around the cavern in vain, try¬ 
ing to capture the Greeks, who skillfully 
evaded him by keeping among the sheep. 
In the morning they tied rams together, 
three and three, and by clinging to the 
wool on the bellies of the central rams they 


made their escape through the doorway, 
though the Cyclops felt the sheep as they 
passed that his prisoners might not escape. 
As soon as they passed beyond his reach, 
Ulysses and the remaining companions 
dropped to the ground. They bore the 
sheep aboard their boat and made off. 
When a short distance from the shore 
Ulysses could not refrain from taunting the 
Cyclops, who broke off a huge fragment 
of rock and threw it toward the sound of 
Ulysses’ voice, almost swamping the ship. 

Still another account represents the Cy¬ 
clops as a race of giants from Thrace, who, 
being expelled from their own country, 
wandered under their king, Cyclops, 
throughout Greece, building tremendous 
stone walls, remains of which may be seen 
to this day at Mycenae and elsewhere. The 
stones are of such size that it seems incred¬ 
ible that ordinary people ever could have 
laid them in place, whence the term Cy¬ 
clopean rocks, masonry, etc. 

In zoology, the Cyclops is an energetic 
water flea that darts about with great vi¬ 
vacity, catching and devouring its minute 
neighbors. It depends on agility, rather 
than strength. It derives its name from 
an apparently single black eye in the middle 
of its head. 

Cygnus, or Cycnus, sig'nus, in Greek 
mythology, an intimate friend of Phaeton, 
who, having borrowed the chariot of his fa¬ 
ther, Phoebus Apollo, nearly set the world 
on fire. Phaeton was slain by a thunder¬ 
bolt of Jove and fell headlong into the 
great river Eridanus. Cygnus mourned 
long and deeply for his friend. He would 
spend hours wandering on the shores of 
the river which had received Phaeton’s 
body. Frequently he would plunge into 
the waters, occasionally bringing to the 
surface some ghastly relic of the disaster. 
Finally, in pity or in anger, the gods 
changed him into a great bird. Still he 
sailed pensively about upon the river where 
his friend was drowned, often bending his 
long white neck and thrusting his head 
below the surface, as though still searching 
for some sad trophy of the beloved Phaeton. 
This is the way swans came into the world. 

Cynic, sm'ik, one of an ancient school 
of philosophers founded by Antisthenes at 


CYNOSURA—CYPRESS 


Athens about 380 B. C. The doctrines 
of Antisthenes were probably a severe in¬ 
terpretation of those of Socrates, whose 
pupil he had been. Antisthenes taught: 

1. That virtue is the only good. 

2. That pleasure for its own sake is 

wrong. 

3. That in self-control lies the essence 

of virtue. 

The cynics argued that, by acquiring an 
ability to do without the externalities of 
life, man becomes assimilated to God. Di¬ 
ogenes was Antisthenes’ most noted pupil. 
Indeed, he so far outstripped his master 
that it is his name, rather than that of the 
true founder of the school, that comes to 
mind when the cynics are mentioned. The 
cynics carried their theories so far in trying 
to live the “simple life” that they not only 
became ridiculous, but even deserving of 
the contempt which they received in large 
measure. In fact, the name cynic is a 
Greek word meaning “dog,” applied to 
these men because, in their disregard of 
opinion, they relapsed into carelessness and 
slovenly manners, and even into neglect of 
decency. On account of the cynic’s scorn 
of social customs and other people’s views, 
the word cynic has come to mean one who 
sees a selfish motive in all actions, and 
hence finds little to commend. A cynical 
person is therefore one who has little re¬ 
gard for the finer feelings or respect for 
the motives of others. In place of princi¬ 
ple, he recognizes policy. See Stoics. 

The cynic is one who never sees a good qual¬ 
ity in a man, and never fails to see a bad one. 
He is the human owl, vigilant in darkness and 
blind to light, mousing for vermin, and never 
seeing noble game. The cynic puts all human 
actions into only two classes—openly bad, and 
secretly bad. ... If Mr. A is pronounced a re¬ 
ligious man, he will reply: yes, on Sundays. Mr. 
B has just joined the church: certainly; the elec¬ 
tions are coming on. The minister of the gospel 
is called an example of diligence : it is his trade. 
Such a man is generous : of other men’s money. 
This man is obliging: to lull suspicion and cheat 

you. That man is upright: because he is green- 

Henry Ward Beecher. 

Cynosura, Ursa Minor, or Little 
Bear, a north polar constellation. The 
Greek name signifies dog’s tail. Cynosura 
was a nymph of Mount Ida, a nurse of 
Zeus, who was transported to the sky and 


metamorphosed into the constellation. As 
pictured by the ancients, the tip of the tail 
is marked by the north star or polar star. 
The name of the constellation was applied 
to the star. As Cynosura or the polar star 
was the sole guide, the compass, of the 
ancient mariner, it was watched by all 
eyes. The invention of the compass has 
withdrawn attention from the pole star, and 
cynosure is now used more frequently to 
designate merely a center of attraction,— 
any object to which general attention is di¬ 
rected. 

Meadows trim with daisies pied. 

Shallow brooks and rivers wide; 

Towers and battlements it sees 
Bosom’d high in tufted trees. 

Where perhaps some beauty lies, 

The cynosure of neighboring eyes. 

—Milton, L’Allegro. 

Cypress, an evergreen tree akin to our 
white cedar and arbor vitae. The cypress 
of history is native to the countries of the 
Eastern Mediterranean region and east¬ 
ward to Persia. A cypress in Lombardy 
twenty-three feet in circumference is be¬ 
lieved to have been alive in the days of Ju¬ 
lius Caesar. In making his road over the 
Simplon Pass, Napoleon turned aside to 
save this tree. The wood of the cypress is 
heavy, firm, and full of resin, which ex¬ 
cludes water and is not subject to the at¬ 
tacks of insects. For these reasons cypress 
wood is the type of durability. It is thought 
that the gopher wood of the Old Testament 
was cypress. The ancients were familiar with 
the qualities of cypress wood. The Egyp¬ 
tians used it in making mummy cases. A 
statue of Jupiter carved out of cypress is 
stated, on the authority of Pliny, to have 
existed 600 years. The cypress doors of 
St. Peter’s Church in Rome are said to have 
lasted 400 years and to have shown no sign 
of decay when changed for bronze ones. 
“Cypress was in request for poles, rafts, 
joists, and for the construction of wine 
presses, tables, and musical instruments, 
and on that account was so valuable that a 
plantation of cypress was considered a 
sufficient dowry for a daughter.” Laws 
were engraved on cypress tablets. The 
family treasure was entrusted to a cypress 
chest. The bold cypress is a valuable Am¬ 
erican timber tree, often over 100 feet high. 


/ 


CYPRIPEDIUM—CZAR 


The cypress of the Levant is a slender, 
dark, gloomy, stately tree, 60 to 100 feet 
in height. If a tree be cut down, the stump 
never sprouts again. It has long been con¬ 
sidered the emblem of mourning and the 
symbol of death. Eastern nations plant 
it in their cemeteries, and place twigs in 
the coffin of the dead*. The cemeteries 
about Constantinople are dense cypress 
groves. A cypress tree planted by a grave 
keeps solemn guard through the centuries. 
It is to this popular fancy that Longfel¬ 
low alludes: 

And, by the cypresses 

Softly o’ershadowed, 

Until the Angel 

Calls them, they slumber! 

Cypripedium, sip-ri-pe'di-um. See 
Lady’s Slipper. 

Cyprus, an Asiatic island in the eastern 
end of the Mediterranean. Its area is about 
3,560 square miles. Its population is about 
300,000, equal to that of Minneapolis. The 
island is mountainous. The central peak 
is 6,400 feet high. The streams or short 
mountain torrents go dry in midsummer. 
Roads, telegraphs, over 300 schools, post- 
offices, and cables reaching Egypt and the 
Syrian coast, insure the intellectual devel¬ 
opment of the people. The raising of sheep 
and goats, of cotton, silk, raisins, wool, 
figs, olives, oranges, and tobacco, the mak¬ 
ing of cheese and wine, and the manage¬ 
ment of forests and sponge fishing engage 
the inhabitants. There are valuable quar¬ 
ries of building stone and ancient mines of 
copper. In fact, the English word, copper, 
is a corruption of cypress—c having the 
sound of k. By , the ancients Cyprus was 
considered the halfway house between Asia 
and Greece. The island has been under 
the rule of Tyre, Assyria, Egypt, Persia, 
Alexandria, Rome, Constantinople, the 
Arabs, the Crusaders, the Turks and, since 
the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-8, of Great 
Britain, under whose rule life and property 
are finally secure. About one-fourth of the 
inhabitants are Mohammedan, the rest are 
chiefly members of the Greek Church. In 
mythology Cyprus was sacred to Venus. 
Recent excavations on the sites of former 
temples have brought forth many treasures 
of art. 


Cyrus, si'rus, king of Persia. Herodo¬ 
tus gives many incidents of his early life 
that rest on doubtful authority. He was 
a prince of Persia, then tributary to Media. 
In 559 B. C. he led a revolt against the 
authority of the Medes and established an 
independent Persian kingdom. Later he 
made war on the Medes and turned the ta¬ 
bles, making Media a tributary state of Per¬ 
sia. Babylon, Syria, and Asia Minor were 
added to the Persian domains. The Llebrews 
remember Cyrus kindly because the over¬ 
throw of Babylon released them from a long 
captivity and permitted their return to Pal¬ 
estine. The Greeks had little cause to 
bless his memory; for he subdued the Greek 
cities on the coast of Asia Minor and re¬ 
placed the mild rule of the Lydian Croe¬ 
sus by Persian despotism. He laid the 
foundation of the great Persian Empire that 
later absorbed Egypt. It extended north¬ 
ward and eastward until it embraced Asia 
from the Hellespont to the Indus. Cyrus 
is to be remembered as having founded the 
world power that preceded the still great¬ 
er empire of Alexander. He well deserves 
the name of Cyrus the Great. He lost his 
life 529 B. C. in an expedition against 
the Scythians, : a warlike people north¬ 
east of the Caspian Sea. See Croesus ; 
Babylon. 

Cyrus the Younger (424-401 B. C.), 
a prince of Persia. He was the younger 
brother of Artaxerxes, king of Persia. He 
was pardoned once, it is claimed, for at¬ 
tempting to supplant his brother, and was 
sent to rule Asia Minor. Here he inter¬ 
ested himself in Grecian politics, taking the 
part of Sparta. In 401 B. C. he enlisted 
10,000 Spartans, and with a large force of 
Asiatic allies advanced through Asia Minor 
on Babylon. At the battle of Cunaxa, near 
the great capital, his army was defeated 
and he was slain. The upward march, the 
stand of the ten thousand, and their mar¬ 
velous retreat are the theme of Xenophon’s 
Anabasis. 

Czar, zar, the ordinary title of the em¬ 
peror of Russia. It has long been consid¬ 
ered a corruption of the word Caesar, used 
by the emperors of Rome and the East, as 
Caesar Augustus. Modern scholarship is 
rather of the opinion, however, that the 


CZECHS 


word, czar or tsar, is of Tartar origin— 
a survival of the time when that people 
occupied eastern Europe. The czar is not 
only the arbitrary ruler of his people; but 
he is the sacred head 6f the Greek Church, 
the national church of Russia. See Russia. 

Czechs, cheks, a western branch of 
the Slavonic race. The Czechs include the 
Moravians, the Slovacs of Hungary, and the 
Bohemians. They are allied to the Poles 
and to the Russians. In the day of John 
Huss and Jerome of Prague this element 
was one of the most prominent in central 
Europe, but persecution, exile, conquest, 
and oppression pretty effectually suppressed 
rising intellectuality. Of late the 6,000,- 
000 Czechs in the Austrian Empire have 
been gaining influence. It may be pre¬ 
dicted that they will one day rule the Aus¬ 


trians, or drive them out of the empire, 
or be themselves subjugated by the Ger¬ 
man Empire. The Czechs have a well de¬ 
veloped language and quite a literature. 
The alphabet contains forty-two letters, and 
is more nearly phonetic than ours. Instead 
of borrowing, they make new words as 
they need them. They would be more apt 
for instance, to call a bicycle a two-wheel 
than to borrow a Greek word as we have 
done. The language is noted for subtle 
shades of distinction. A part of the in¬ 
struction in the University of Prague is 
given in this tongue. Czech newspapers 
and books are multiplying. The literature 
is especially rich in folklore, song, and fic¬ 
tion. The Czech mind is gifted in scien¬ 
tific research. See Bohemia; Moravia; 
Austria; Prague; Huss, John. 



Daddy-Long-Legs, an insect-like crea¬ 
ture with exceedingly long, slender legs, 
closely related to the spider. Known also 
as harvestman and grandfather graybeard. 
The legs are very long and are bent up in 
the middle, so that the body sags down as 
though the legs were too weak to support it. 
When held by one leg the harvestman first 
points in this direction, then in that. Boys 
going after the cows catch a “daddy” to 
make him tell which way the cows have 
gone. He points first one way, then an¬ 
other, and is sure to hit on the right di¬ 
rection after a time. The daddy-long-legs 
has a disagreeable odor, but he lives on 
plant lice and is perfectly harmless. See 
Spider. 

Daedalus, ded'a-lus, in Greek legend, 
an Athenian artisan and mechanician. He 
was credited with the execution of many 
notable works, temples, altars, etc. The 
Greeks claimed that he invented carpentry 
and many tools, such as the saw, axe, and 
gimlet. Daedalus was also a famous sculp¬ 
tor. He made a statue of Heracles so life¬ 
like that it had to be tied to keep it from 
running away. He was regarded as the 
personification of art and handicrafts, and 
was worshiped by artists’ guilds in various 
places. His nephew, Talos, showed some 
skill as an inventor. Daedalus became 
jealous of his talent and murdered him. 
For this deed he was driven to Crete. Here 
he built the famous labyrinth for King 
Minos. Later he lost the favor of Minos and 
was confined in a tower. He succeeded 
in escaping from confinement, but could 
not leave the island as the king had every 
vessel searched. “Minos may control land 
and sea, but not the air,” said Daedalus. 
He then constructed a pair of wings for 
himself, and, finding he could use them 
successfully, made another pair for his son 
Icarus. When they had practiced flying 
enough to feel safe, they started over the 
sea. Daedalus crossed safely; but Icarus, 
exulting as he felt himself borne aloft by 


his wings, flew too high. The heat of 
the sun melted the wax which held the 
wings in place, and poor Icarus fell into 
the sea and was drowned. Daedalus reached 
Sicily in safety, where he was protected 
from the anger of Minos, and erected many 
famous works. See Ariadne ; Labyrinth ; 
Minos; Icarus. 

Daffodil, a lily-like flowering herb be¬ 
longing to the same family as the iris, or 
blue flag, and the blue-eyed grass. The 
flower scape springs from a bulb; the co¬ 
rolla is noticeable for a trumpet-shaped 
hood, rising in its center. Narcissus, the 
botanical name, includes daffodils and jon¬ 
quils. The common daffodil is a meadow 
plant eighteen inches high, found from 
Sweden and England to Spain and Austria. 
Wordsworth’s delight in the daffodil is 
worth a place here : 

I wandered lonely as a cloud 

That floats on high o’er vales and hills, 
When all at once I saw a crowd, 

A host of golden daffodils,— 

Beside the lake, beneath the trees, 

Fluttering, dancing in the breeze. 

There are a large number of varieties of 
daffodils in cultivation. Among the more 
interesting is the hoop-petticoat daffodil, 
which has solitary, erect, yellow flowers. 
Another variety, the rush daffodil, has a 
short crown and slender, drooping tube. 

Then the pied wind-flowers and the tulip tall, 
And narcissi, the fairest among them all, 

Who gaze on their eyes in the stream’s recess, 

Till they die of their own dear loveliness. 

—Shelley. 

Daguerreotype, da-ger'o-tlp, a picture 
produced by the earliest process of photog¬ 
raphy. The method was described in 1837 
by Daguerre of Paris, for whom the proc¬ 
ess was named. The lights and shadows of 
a figure were fixed by light rays on a cop¬ 
per plate, thinly coated with silver. The 
plate was first placed in a bath of iodine 
vapor to render it sensitive. Old-fashioned 
daguerreotypes may be found among family 
treasures. They differ from photographs 


DAHLIA—DAKOTA 


in that each exposure yielded one picture— 
a positive which could not be multiplied. 
To obtain six pictures it was necessary to 
sit six times. Daguerre was rewarded by 
the French government by membership in 
the Legion of Honor and a pension of 
$1,200. See Photography. 

Dahlia, dal'ya, a genus of flowering 
herbs, remotely akin to sunflowers and as¬ 
ters, and closely related to the coreopsis and 
beggar’s tick. There are several wild spe¬ 
cies, native to Mexico. The dahlia was 
named by Linnaeus for his student, Dr. 
Dahl. The original plant is said to be 
eight feet high, with a single row of dull 
scarlet rays and a yellow center. Florists 
now claim 2,000 varieties, mostly double, 
in every hue known to the horticultural 
show. The dahlia is raised generally from 
spindle-shaped tubers, of which the plant 
produces a cluster late in autumn. They 
need the same care as potatoes. The dahlia 
has been considered a coarse flower, but of 
late it is sharing the interest which has been 
shown in the chrysanthemum. One of the 
popular new forms has flowers not unlike a 
cactus, and is called the cactus variety. 

Dairy. See Cheese; Milk; Butter; 
Cow. 

Daisy, a low, flowering plant allied to 
the aster. The word is a contraction of 
day’s eye, in allusion to the sun-like flower. 
The common daisy is found in meadows 
and pastures throughout Europe. The 
leaves form a small rosette on the ground. 
The tiny scapes bear a flower each, though 
one cultivated variety, known as the “hen- 
and-chickens” has a central flower sur¬ 
rounded by a brood of a dozen small ones. 
On the approach of rain or nightfall the 
straps of the daisy curl up. It is a flower 
that “goes to bed with the sun, and with 
him rises weeping.” The daisy is a fa¬ 
vorite with the poets. Chaucer writes: 

To seen this floure agenst the sunne sprede 
Whan it riseth early by the morrow. 

That blissful sight softeneth all my sorrow. 

and again, 

Of all the floures in the mede, 

Than love I most these floures white and rede, 
Soch that men callen daisies in our toun. 

Milton, ere he lost his sight, rejoiced in 
Meadows trim with daisies pied. 


In Scotland, the daisy is called the gow- 
an; in Yorkshire, the bairnwort, or child’s 
flower; in France, la marguerite, i. e. the 
pearl. In America, the daisy is a garden 
flower. It has escaped from cultivation in 
many sections. The name is applied also 
to the tall flowering plant known more ap¬ 
propriately as the fleabane. A genuine 
daisy, a hand’s breadth high, grows wild 
in the Rocky Mountain region. The bit¬ 
terness of the herbage makes the daisy un¬ 
welcome in pastures. All kinds of stock 
avoid it. It spreads rapidly and persist¬ 
ently by means of underground root-stocks, 
and competes with the grass for possession 
of the soil. To most farmers it becomes 
a pest, yet plowman Burns, climbing to 
his loft after a day’s work, wrote: 

Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flow’r, 

Thou’s met me in an evil hour; 

For I maun crush amang the stoure 
Thy slender stem ; 

To spare thee now is past my pow’r, 

Thou bonnie-gem. 

Dakota, a former territory of the Unit¬ 
ed States. See North Dakota; South 
Dakota. 

Dakota, a family of American Indians. 
In their day the Dakotas extended from 
the evergreen region of the Great Lakes 
to the Rocky Mountains. In numbers, 
mental qualities, and influence, the Dako¬ 
tas may be ranked as inferior to the Al- 
gonquins and Iroquois only. They appear 
to be related to the now extinct Catawba 
Indians of the South and to the Assiniboins 
of Manitoba. They were called Sioux by 
the French, but their native name is as 
given. Six tribes are recognized: the San¬ 
tee, Sisseton, Yankton, Wahpeton, Yank- 
tonnai, and Teton. These again are sub¬ 
divided into a number of bands, some of 
the more prominent of which are the 
Ogillallah, the Omaha, the Osage, the 
Winnebago, Mandan, and Crow. When 
settlers began to pour into the upper Mis¬ 
sissippi Valley the Chippewas in the ever¬ 
green region and the Sioux of the 
prairie were hereditary enemies. The 
Chippewas were skilled in the use of the 
birch bark canoe; the Dakotas in the man¬ 
agement of ponies, of which they main¬ 
tained great droves. A piece of buffalo 
hide served for a saddle; a thong of the 


DALLAS 


same for a surcingle; a twisted rope of 
horsehair, lashed to the lower jaw, served 
for a bridle. The Dakota lodge or tepee 
consisted of buffalo skins upheld by lodge 
poles meeting at the top in the form of 
a cone. Parkman, the historian, visited 
them in 1847. We make room for two 
characteristic paragraphs: 

The buffalo supplies them with the necessaries 
of life; with habitations, food, clothing, beds, 
and fuel; strings for their bows, glue, thread, 
cordage, trail-ropes for their horses, coverings 
for their saddles, vessels to hold water, boats 
to cross streams, and the means of purchasing all 
that they want from the traders. When the 
buffalo are extinct, they too must dwindle away. 

• ••••••• 

The wild cavalcade that defiled with me down 
the gorges of the Black Hills, with its paint and 
war-plumes, fluttering trophies and savage em¬ 
broidery, bows, arrows, lances, and shields, will 
never be seen again. The Indian of today, armed 
with a revolver and crowned with an old hat; 
cased, possibly, in trousers or muffled in a tawdry 
shirt, is an Indian still, but an Indian shorn of 
the picturesqueness which was his most conspic¬ 
uous merit. 

The later history of the Dakotas is that 
of other Indian tribes. First came white 
trappers and fur traders, then cessions of 
territory. Thousands of settlers thronged 
in driving away or exterminating game 
and forcing the Indians to retreat to more 
remote , hunting grounds. The Dakotas 
were a warlike race and made at least 
two notable attempts to stem the tide of 
the invader. In 1862 Little Crow deemed 
the absence of the Great Father’s young 
men in the Civil War a favorable oppor¬ 
tunity. He organized a general outbreak 
in the valley of the Minnesota. Several 
hundred persons were massacred with 
frightful atrocities. The white troops ap¬ 
peared and the Indians fled to join their 
Western brethren. Of a number who sur¬ 
rendered themselves, thirty-eight were 
hanged from a single scaffold at Mankato. 
In 1876 the Dakotas made their last stand 
under wSitting Bull in the valley of the 
Little Big Horn in Montana. 

Despite the attempts of the general gov¬ 
ernment to care for the Dakotas on res¬ 
ervations, and really considerable payments 
in the form of cattle and money, their num¬ 
ber has diminished steadily. The total 
Dakota population in the Dakotas, Ne¬ 


braska, Montana, and Canada is said not 
to exceed 4,000. Various religious denom¬ 
inations have maintained missions with 
great faithfulness. The Bible has been trans¬ 
lated into the Dakota language. On some 
of their reservations, particularly at Yank¬ 
ton, Pine Ridge, and Goodwill, churches 
and schools are maintained, and a consid¬ 
erable degree of civilization has been at¬ 
tained. The Dakota Indian Presbyterian 
Synod includes twenty-nine Indian churches 
and nearly 2,000 communicants, but for 
all that, even to the most ardent friend 
of the Dakotas, the outlook seems dis¬ 
heartening. Left to themselves, the Da¬ 
kotas might prosper; but the whiskey and 
vice of the white man are too powerful 
for the weak red man. 

The Dakota names of the months are of 
interest not only for themselves, but for 
the hints they give of former Indian life: 

January —Hard month. Crusty snow, ice. 
February —Raccoon month. On a bright day the 
raccoon comes out. 

March —Sore-eyes month. The dazzling snow and 
the smoke of the tepees caused sore eyes, 
even blindness. 

April —Goose-laying month. Wild geese arrive. 
May —Planting month. The squaws plant corn. 
June —Strawberry month. Named probably by 
the children. 

July —Choke-cherry month. 

August —Harvest month. Corn. 

September —Rice-gathering month. 

October —Deer month. After the fall of leaves. 
November —When-deer-shed-antiers month. 
December —Drying-corn month. 

See Indians; Custer. 

Dallas, the county seat of Dallas Coun¬ 
ty, Texas. It is situated on the Trinity 
River about thirty-three miles from Fort 
Worth. In the midst of Texas’ rich grain 
belt and served by five railroads, the city 
has important commercial and manufactur¬ 
ing interests. Among its numerous indus¬ 
tries are cotton mills, grain elevators, flour 
mills, lumber and planing mills, foundries, 
machine shops, and nurseries. There are 
manufactories also of textiles, cotton-seed 
oil, saddlery and harness. Dallas is one of 
the largest distributing points of farm ma¬ 
chinery and farm implements in the United 
States. The city has a number of parks 
and many fine buildings, among which may 
be mentioned the Roman Catholic Cathe- 


DALLES—DAMASCUS 


dral of the Sacred Heart, a Protestant 
cathedral, a sanitarium, and a Carnegie 
library. There are many educational in¬ 
stitutions, both public and private, includ¬ 
ing Dallas University, Southern Methodist 
University, and Baylor Medical College. 
The population of Dallas in 1910 was 
92,104. 

Dalles, dalz, a French word meaning 
slabs of stone. The name was applied by 
the French employes of the Hudson Bay 
Company to a number of rapids where the 
water falls by low leaps from one bench 
of stone to another. It then became a 
general name for a series of rapids, as 
the Dalles of the Wisconsin, the Dalles of 
the St. Croix: The most noted dalles are 
those of the Columbia River, a region of 
rare scenic beauty. An Oregon city gets 
its name from them. 

Dalton, John (1766-1844), a modest 
English chemist, known as the author of 
Dalton’s Atomic Theory. For a time Dal¬ 
ton was an instructor in a college at Man¬ 
chester. During the last forty years of 
his life he supported himself by taking 
private pupils at sixty cents an hour. At 
one time John, being about to revisit his 
native village, bethought himself that he 
would bring his Quaker mother a pair of 
fine silk stockings. He accordingly pur¬ 
chased a pair marked, “Newest fashion’’; 
but his mother’s remark, “Thou hast 
brought me a pair of grand hose, John; 
but what made thee fancy so light a col¬ 
or? I can never show myself at meeting 
in them,” rather disconcerted him, as to 
his eyes the hose were of the orthodox 
drab color. His mother insisted that the 
stockings were “as red as a cherry.” 
John’s brother upheld the “drab” side of 
the dispute; so the neighbors were called 
in, and gave their decision that the hose 
were “varra fine stuff, but uncommon scar- 
lety.” Being convinced that he did not 
see colors well himself, Dalton investigated 
the question, and found that many people 
are unable to distinguish all colors; some 
being deficient as to pink, others as to scar¬ 
let, etc. This defect of vision, or color 
blindness, is often called Daltonism. 

Dalton’s reputation rests on two princi¬ 
ples known as the Atomic Theory: 


1. Every element is made up of atoms 

whose weight is constant. 

2. Chemical compounds are formed by the 

union of the atoms of different ele¬ 
ments in the simplest numerical pro¬ 
portions. 

Interpreting these principles we say: 
Silver is an element, and is made up of 
atoms all alike, each having a weight that 
never changes. Water is a compound; two 
atoms of hydrogen unite with an atom of 
oxygen—never otherwise—to form a mole¬ 
cule of water. A molecule of water then 
weighs as much as two atoms of hydrogen 
and one atom of oxygen, never more, nev¬ 
er less. The last statement seems self- 
evident, but it was not so in Dalton’s day. 
Many yet held that heat had weight. 

Dalton took some steps in establishing 
atomic weights. He took the weight of an 
atom of hydrogen, whatever that might be, 
as a basis; but he left the work unfinished, 
and it is incomplete at the present time. 
In deference to modern scholarship, we 
should add that there is evidence that even 
atoms consist of smaller portions of matter. 

Damascus, the capital of Syria. It is 
called the oldest city in the world. It 
is 96 miles by rail from Beirut, its Medi¬ 
terranean seaport. Palmyra of the Desert 
is 100 miles eastward. Jerusalem, its 
neighbor on the southwest, is 150 miles 
away and 40 miles nearer the sea. Mecca, 
the sacred city, is 1,000 miles to the south¬ 
ward on the Medina road. Starting east¬ 
ward by train from Beirut, the traveler 
ascends the Lebanon range, crosses the val¬ 
ley of the Upper Jordan, climbs a second 
range, and sees Damascus, a glittering pan¬ 
orama of mosques, palms, and minarets at 
his feet. One could not be in greater 
error than to imagine Damascus a tumble- 
down city in a desert. A mountain stream 
with a cold, swift, deep current, the Abana 
of Naaman, the leper (2 Kings, v: 12), 
rushes eastward into a plain which its wa¬ 
ters have converted into a paradise. Three 
hundred square miles and a hundred more 
along the ancient Pharpar, watered by 
canal and pipes, are a veritable garden of 
fertility. 

Damascus has been a western station of 
the great caravan trade from time iin- 


DAMASK 


memorial, and is a busy city today. Ba¬ 
zaars,—narrow, roofed lanes lined with 
merchants’ stalls, offer European clothes, 
Persian carpets, French ribbons and silks, 
Sheffield knives, Cashmere shawls, Mocha 
coffee, Dutch sugar, and Bagdad tobac¬ 
co. The city manufactures swords, cloth, 
silks, cloaks, ornaments, guns, and house¬ 
hold utensils. Five thousand hand looms 
clatter away; 10,000 people are engaged in 
weaving. Now that Damascus has a rail¬ 
way, a renewal of trade is growing up with 
the Arabs of the surrounding country, and 
several million dollars’ worth of foreign 
goods are bought annually. The sights 
of Damascus are the swift river, the or¬ 
chards, the bazaars, the khans, the mosques, 
and mansions with mud exteriors and open 
courts within. These courts are adorned 
with marble fountains, lemon trees, fragrant 
shrubs, and climbing vines. They are sur¬ 
rounded by apartments with marble floors, 
silk-cushioned divans, and ceilings in gilt 
arabesque. The city has a population of 
about 150,000, chiefly followers of Moham¬ 
med. About 16,000 Christians and 6,000 
Jews are tolerated, but they are required to 
live in their own quarters. Once a year 
a great caravan convenes to visit the tomb 
of the prophet at Mecca, and to do a lit¬ 
tle trading at the Mecca fair. Railroad 
connections are cutting off this business; 
but the faithful still gather at Damascus 
for a four months’ pilgrimage. Their set¬ 
ting out and their return are times of pomp 
and holiday. 

The early prominence of Damascus as a 
manufacturing town and a business center 
may be inferred from several words well 
fixed in our vocabulary. A Damascus 
blade is a sword of the finest temper 
known. Damascus steel is still a name for 
steel of a peculiar twist and toughness. 
Damask linen is the type of perfection for 
beautiful linens with woven figures. For 
damson plums we are indebted also to 
Damascus. 

On their return to Europe the Crusaders 
brought home many valuable ideas from 
Damascus. Damascus is now getting ideas 
in return from the western nations. A recent 
consular report gives an interesting account 
of a modern American steam threshing rig: 


Its recent triumphal march through Damascus 
stirred the “White City of the East” from center 
to circumference. On its way into the country it 
broke down bridges innumerable, but pulled itself 
and train out of the creek beds beautifully. It 
had the honor of being started on its pioneer 
career in the presence of the governor-general of 
the province, the field marshal in command of 
the fifth army corps, and many other gentlemen 
of high station in Ottoman civil and military 
life. With its self-feeder, automatic bagger, 
straw stacker, etc., it is a marvel of ingenuity, 
and its service to this country, in blazing the 
way for labor-saving machinery, with its accom¬ 
panying amelioration of industrial and social 
conditions, in a region east of Mount Hermon, 
where people live and work as did their fore¬ 
fathers when Abraham crossed their pastures 
with his Chaldean flocks, is beyond estimation. 

See Asia Minor; Syria; Turkey; 
Crusades; Windmill. 

Damask, specifically, a twilled linen fab¬ 
ric, plain or figured, in use for tablecloths 
and table napkins, centerpieces, doilies, etc. 
The name damask designates the weave, 
rather than the material. The lustrous 
quality of all damask is due partly to what 
is known as the satin weave, which means 
that the warp is brought to the surface 
to a greater extent than in plain weave. 
A weft thread, for instance, may pass under 
sixteen warp threads, over one, under six¬ 
teen, and over one again. In figured dam¬ 
ask, this is, of course, more or less inter¬ 
rupted by the pattern. 

The figures of the pattern are produced 
by bringing the warp threads to the sur¬ 
face in groups, allowing them to be skipped 
by the weft threads, according to a regular 
design. The warp and woof threads thus 
lie at right angles to each other on the sur¬ 
face of the material, in more or less broad 
groups. The play of light upon the fab¬ 
ric defines the pattern from the ground. In 
a plain color, the angle at which the light 
strikes the surface determines whether the 
pattern appears lustrous and the ground 
dull, or the pattern dull and the ground 
lustrous. 

Originally damask was a silken fabric. 
It was woven in colors, as well as plain, 
and sometimes with gold and silver 
threads. The weaver used a draw loom,— 
so called from the fact that certain of the 
warp threads must be drawn up to allow 
the weft threads to skip them. This was 


DAME DURDEN—DAMIEN 


done by hand, cords being attached to the 
separate warp threads. Often the weaver 
had a boy to assist in drawing these threads. 
From this the contrivance was sometimes 
called the “draw-boy loom.” The draw loom 
originated, it is thought, in China, where 
the village weaver still weaves damask silk 
on a rude contrivance that may well have 
been the forerunner of the modern damask 
loom. The Hindus were celebrated for 
their damasks. Babylon became a weav¬ 
ing center. At one time a Babylonish gar¬ 
ment had the reputation in the oriental 
world that Parisian gowns now have in 
modern society. A knowledge of the draw 
loom was one of the numerous bits of 
knowledge brought back to Europe by the 
Crusaders. During the Middle Ages the 
great artists of France, Germany, and the 
Netherlands considered it by no means be¬ 
neath their dignity to contribute original, 
and, it is needless to say, beautiful designs 
for damasks. The Jacquard loom has 
superseded the draw-loom, performing 
automatically operations formerly requir¬ 
ing great skill and patience. This has ma¬ 
terially lowered the cost of damask linens. 

The name, damask, is from Damascus, 
Syria. The silk weavers of this city at¬ 
tained so great perfection in the manufac¬ 
ture of this textile that the name was giv¬ 
en to the fabric without regard to the place 
of its production. Since the sixteenth cen¬ 
tury, this name has come to be applied to 
any material woven after the manner of 
the first damask, but at present, if used 
with no qualifying word, damask implies 
a linen material. 

Linen damask is known as “double” or 
“single,” according to the number of 
threads brought to the surface in a group, 
in applying the “satin” principle of weav¬ 
ing. In double damask eight threads to 
one “tied down” appear; in single damask 
four threads to one tied down. In double 
damask the finest grades of linen are used, 
and the work is usually done on hand-looms. 
The terms double and single came probably 
from the fact that in double damask the 
pattern is almost equally distinct on the 
two sides. Coarse linens would not look 
well woven “double,” as the quality of 

the thread would be too conspicuous. 

II-23 


The linens of Ireland, Scotland, Ger¬ 
many, and Austria are all notable for the 
beauty of the material and weave. French 
linen is probably the best of all, its fine¬ 
ness, beauty of design, and superior “satin” 
effects making it especially desirable, but 
very expensive. 

See Satin; Twill. 

Dame Durden, in an old English song, 
a famous housewife. In Dickens’ Bleak 
House the careful and conscientious Esther 
Summerson is affectionately called “Dame 
Durden” by Mr. Jarndyce, owner of 
“Bleak House.” 

Damien, da'mi-en, Father, a Belgian 
priest noted for self-sacrificing missionary 
work in the Hawaiian Islands. In order to 
stamp out leprosy the government of these 
islands requires all lepers to retire to the 
little island of Molokai as soon as the first 
sign of leprosy is seen. Even young moth¬ 
ers are obliged to leave their homes and 
children. No return is permitted; no 
further intercourse with relatives is pos¬ 
sible. As leprosy eats away the extremities 
of the body first, and creeps toward the 
vital organs slowly, these unfortunate 
wretches drag their rotting limbs about for 
years, it may be, before death comes to their 
relief. This young priest was so stirred 
by the misery of the exiled colony, several 
hundred in number, that he cut himself off 
from the outside world and went into vol¬ 
untary residence among them. From 1877 
until the time of his death, twelve years 
later, he toiled heroically, feeding the hun¬ 
gry, dressing loathsome wounds, comfort¬ 
ing the dying, and burying the dead. From 
the very nature of his work Father Damien 
knew he would become a leper sooner or 
later. After eight years at Molokai spots 
of leprosy appeared on his hands and feet. 
He was a doomed man. At his death a 
bishop-missionary, resident in Honolulu, 
the capital city of the islands, wrote a note 
to a friend belittling the priest’s work, de¬ 
faming his character, and styling him a 
“coarse, dirty, bigoted, headstrong man.” 
This letter was published in the Sydney 
Presbyterian, October 26, 1889, and fell 
into the hands of Robert Louis Stevenson, 
who was well acquainted with the facts. 
Stevenson was indignant, and addressed the 


x 


/ 


DAMOCLES—DAMROSCH 


bishop an open letter, since published un¬ 
der the title of Father Damien , in which he 
contrasts the luxury, sloth, and jealousy of 
the bishop with the poverty, toil, and 
sacrifice of the priest. This remarkable ar¬ 
ticle is one of the keenest pieces of invec¬ 
tive in the English language. The prom¬ 
inence of the writer, the merit of the topic, 
and the skill of the writing render the inci¬ 
dent one of note. The services and the 
self-sacrifice of Father Damien are com¬ 
memorated in an imperishable bit of liter¬ 
ature and cannot now be forgotten. See 
Leprosy. 

Damocles, a courtier of Dionysius, the 
tyrant of Syracuse. He lived in the first 
half of the fourth century before Christ. 
He had so much to say of the grandeur and 
happiness of kings, and was so given to flat¬ 
tery, that Dionysius prepared a surprise for 
him. Inviting him to sup, and placing him 
in a royal seat, he caused him to look up¬ 
ward in the very midst of the hilarity to 
behold a keen sword suspended above his 
head by a single hair. This quite altered 
Damocles’ view of royal life, and gave 
him a sudden sense of the apprehension of 
danger under which rulers live. An allu¬ 
sion to the sword of Damocles is a well 
worn figure used to denote an impending 
danger that takes away the power .of pres¬ 
ent enjoyment. See Dionysius. 

Damon and Pythias, or Phintias, two 
noble citizens of Syracuse, noted for their 
supreme friendship. Phintias, having in¬ 
curred the displeasure of the tyrant Dionys¬ 
ius, was condemned to die. He begged to 
be allowed to go home to put his affairs in 
order. This was agreed to, Damon taking 
his place in prison. In some way Phintias 
was delayed. In spite of the jeers of the 
populace Damon defended his friend’s ab¬ 
sence with the utmost confidence in his 
fidelity. Phintias arrived just as Damon 
was being led out to die in his place. He 
cast himself into his friend’s arms, de¬ 
manding the latter’s instant release and his 
own execution. Each begged to die for the 
other. The tyrant was so affected by this 
constancy that he set them both free, and 
asked to become a third in their fellow¬ 
ship. The friendship of these two has 
been the subject of many an allusion and 


the theme of the drama in more than one 

language. 

Damps, a name given to certain poison¬ 
ous gases formed in mines. Miners distin¬ 
guish two kinds—choke damp and fire 
damp. Choke damp is composed largely 
of carbonic acid gas, and is found in the 
lowest levels. It will extinguish the flame 
of a candle. No one can live in it for a 
long time. Fire damp also contains car¬ 
bon, combined with hydrogen and mixed 
with atmospheric air. It explodes in con¬ 
tact with a flame. Miners going to their 
work with lighted candles or lamps not in¬ 
frequently run into fire damp before they 
are aware of it. Violent explosions result 
in the death of many men. As early as 
1815 Sir Humphry Davy invented a safe¬ 
ty lamp which consisted essentially of a 
cylinder of wire gauze surrounding the 
flame. Fire damp passes through the 
meshes of the gauze and burns within with 
a feeble blue flame. The flame of the lamp 
cannot pass out through the gauze without 
being cooled to such a degree that it can¬ 
not ignite the dangerous gases. See Davy, 
Sir Humphry; Safety Lamp. 

Darnrosch, dam'rosh, Leopold (1832- 
1885), a Prussian musician. He was edu¬ 
cated at the University of Berlin for the 
practice of medicine, but finding music 
more to his taste devoted his time to it, and 
in 1855 became a concert violinist. After 
filling the position of orchestra director in 
Posen and Breslau, Prussia, he came to 
New York in 1871, becoming director of 
the Arion Society. In 1884 he succeeded 
in introducing German opera in New York 
City. Darnrosch contributed to musical 
magazines, and produced many songs, con¬ 
certos and cantatas. These compositions 
are meritorious but are not the work of 
genius. 

Darnrosch, Walter Johannes, son of 

Leopold, was born in Germany, and in 
1862 came to America with his father. He 
also became a musician, conducted sym¬ 
phony societies in New York, and in 1900 
became conductor of the New York Phil¬ 
harmonic Orchestra, one of the leading 
organizations of its kind in America. He 
is the author of various musical composi¬ 
tions. 


DAMSON—DANAIDES 


Damson, a variety of the common do¬ 
mestic plum or prune. It is known also as 
the Damascus plum; in fact, damson is a 
contraction of the adjective damascene, 
meaning of Damascus. This plum is sup¬ 
posed to have been brought to western 
Europe by the Crusaders returning from 
the East. It was introduced from England 
into America. The fruit is a small, black, 
dark bluish, or purple plum. The damson 
is surpassed by other plums for table use; 
but it is prized by housewives for preserves. 
The fruit in its native state has a puckery 
taste; but when cooked, it-makes jams, 
marmalades, and the richest of preserves. 
See Plum ; Damascus. 

Dana, Charles A. (1819-1897), an 
eminent American journalist. He received 
his education at Harvard. He became a 
member of the famous Brook Farm Com¬ 
munity, and was associated with George 
Ripley and Parke Godwin in the editorship 
of the Harbinger. In 1847 he was made 
managing editor of the New York Tribune , 
a position which he held up to the time of 
the Civil War. In the meanwhile he 
colabored with Ripley in projecting and 
editing Appleton's American Encyclopedia 
in sixteen volumes. During the Civil War 
he was for a time assistant secretary of war. 
His was a busy, useful life, but he is re¬ 
membered chiefly as editor of the New 
York Sun from 1868 onward. He belongs 
to the group of noted New York editors, 
including Greeley and Bryant. His edi¬ 
torials were noted for brilliancy; but 
toward the end he fell into a bitter partisan, 
pessimistic vein, seeming to think the world 
going wholly wrong. He failed on that 
account to retain his influence. 

Dana, James Dwight (1813-1895), 
an eminent American geologist. He was 
born at Utica, New York. He was grad¬ 
uated at Yale in 1833. * In 1838 the 
United States government sent an expedi¬ 
tion under Lieutenant Wilkes to explore 
and survey the southern seas. Mr. Dana 
was fortunate enough to be appointed the 
official mineralogist and geologist. Later 
he became Silliman professor of natural 
history and geology at Yale. Professor 
Dana contributed many articles to scientific 
journals. He was the author, also, of a 


number of textbooks, including a Manual 
of Geology, Textbook of Geology, The 
Geological Story Briefly Told, and Manual 
of Mineralogy. He also wrote a volume on 
Coral Reefs and Islands. He applied the 
term “Archaean” to the oldest rocks and 
proposed that the Archaean Age be recog¬ 
nized as the earliest geologic period. His 
classification has been adopted very gen¬ 
erally by American geologists. 

Danae, dan'a-e, in Greek mythology, 
daughter of Acrisius, king of Argos. 
Acrisius had been warned by an oracle 
that his daughter’s child would cause his 
death. To avoid the fulfillment of this 
prophecy he decided to prevent his daugh¬ 
ter’s marriage, and therefore shut her up 
in a brazen tower built for this express 
purpose. But Zeus was more powerful 
than Acrisius. He had seen and admired 
the beautiful Danae. Now he changed 
himself into a shower of gold, and in this 
form shone into the tower and wooed the 
captive. Perseus, destined to become the 
hero of many famous adventures, was the 
son of Zeus and Danae. Acrisius put child 
and mother into a chest, and sent the chest 
floating on the sea. It was wafted to the 
shores of the island of Seriphus, where it 
became entangled in a fisherman’s net. 
The fisherman opened the chest, took 
Danae and the infant to his own home, 
and there Perseus grew to manhood. 
Danae has been a favorite subject with 
artists. She is usually pictured in her 
tower with the golden shower falling 
about her. In a celebrated painting by 
Corregio, Cupid holds a fold of drapery 
across Danae’s knees to catch the golden 
shower. See Perseus. 

Danaides, da-na'i-dez, in Greek legend, 
the fifty daughters of Danaus. They ac¬ 
companied their father to Argos, but were 
followed thither by the fifty sons of Aegyp- 
tus,' who sought them in marriage. The 
father consented to the marriage, but pro¬ 
vided each daughter with a dagger,. com¬ 
manding her to murder her husband. They 
all obeyed except Hypermnestra, who al¬ 
lowed Lynceus, her husband, to escape. 
The Danaides were purified from their 
crimes by order of Zeus. Nevertheless, so 
the legend runs, they were punished for it 


DANAUS—DANDELION 


after death, for in Hades they were doomed 
to draw water in sieves forever. See 
Danaus. 

Danaus, dan'a-us, in Greek legend, a 
grandson of Poseidon. He was the found¬ 
er and king of Argos. According to the 
legend, he was a native of Chemnis in Up¬ 
per Egypt. Fearing that his brother 
Aegyptus and his sons were in league 
against him, Danaus with his fifty daugh¬ 
ters left his native land and, after various 
adventures, settled in Greece, becoming 
king of Argos. See Danaides. 

Danbury News Man, The, a sobriquet 
of James Montgomery Bailey, an American 
humorist and editor. He was born in Al¬ 
bany, New York, in 1841, and died in 
Danbury, Connecticut, 1894. He founded 
the Danbury News and was its editor for 
years. His jests and humorous articles 
were widely quoted. He wrote Life in 
Danbury, Danbury News Man’s Almanac, 
They All Do It, and The Danbury Boom. 

Dance of Death, a grotesque represen¬ 
tation in which the figure of Death takes 
the lead, followed by dancers of all ages 
and conditions. The Dance of Death had 
its origin in Germany in the fourteenth 
century. It was, in this first instance, a 
sort of morality play consisting of dia¬ 
logues between Death and his followers. 
It was presented by a religious order with 
the purpose of reminding the living that 
death had power to wreck all human plans. 
The presentation was repeated in France. 
It became extremely popular, not only in 
Germany and France, but in Spain and 
England. It seemed to possess a wonder¬ 
ful fascination. Artists soon took up the 
idea. The Dance of Death was presented 
in every conceivable way,—in paintings, in 
tapestry, and in bas relief. Poems were 
written describing different figures and 
scenes. Monastery walls and churchyard 
walls were painted more or less elaborately 
with these groups. A famous Dance of 
Death was painted in fresco on the walls of 
the churchyard in the suburb of St. John 
at Basel, which has been entirely destroyed. 
It represented Death summoning to the 
dance persons of all ranks from pope to 
beggar. It contained about sixty life- 
sized figures. Rhymes explained different 


scenes in the dance. The celebrated Hans 
Holbein produced fifty-three sketches for 
engravings suggested by the Dance of 
Death. The figures are independent—not 
arranged as a dance. Death is represented 
beside the “judge on his bench, the priest 
in his pulpit, the nun in her cell, the doctor 
in his study, the bride and the beggar, the 
king and the infant.” The original draw¬ 
ings are at St. Petersburg. 

Dancing, stepping to music in a gliding 
or lively fashion. It is believed that danc¬ 
ing of some sort is practiced by all peoples. 
Among the Mohammedans, the Hindus, the 
North American Indians, and many races, 
the dance is a religious exercise. Thus we 
hear of the war dance, the rain dance, the 
ghost dance, the medicine dance, the buf¬ 
falo dance, and many others. The Greeks 
danced in honor of their gods and in their 
gymnastic exercises. King David danced 
before the Ark of the Covenant, but the 
Romans deemed it undignified for a man 
to dance. The English Cavaliers and the 
Virginians danced, but the Puritans of 
England and the New England colonists 
deemed dancing a sin. Many families and 
churches still frown on the practice-—espe¬ 
cially dancing in a promiscuous assembly 
of strangers. „Of modern nations, those of 
southern Europe are the more famous for 
dancing. The fandango is a rustic Spanish 
dance; the minuet and quadrille are 
French; the galop, German; the polka, 
Hungarian - ; the waltz, Bavarian; the 
schottische, Bohemian; the reel, fling, and 
strathspey are Scottish; the breakdown is 
African; the jig, Irish; and the ballet, a 
pantomime dance, is thought to be Roman. 
See Puritan. 

Dandelion, a common perennial herb 
of the composite family. From the toothed 
appearance of the leaves, the French gave 
it the name dent de lion, whence our name. 
It appears to grow wild over Asia and 
Europe. It came to this country with 
garden seeds, yet seems to be a native of 
the Rocky Mountains. Children make gar¬ 
lands of its blossoms; the wind makes 
playthings of its seed; the housewife uses 
its leaves for greens; the farmer execrates 
it in his meadows; people who move into 
a new country long for its face; and the 


DANIEL—DANTE 


poet—each person looking at the dande¬ 
lion in his own way—says : 

Dear common flower, that grow’st beside the 
way, 

bringing the dusty road with harmless gold, 

First pledge of blithesome May, 

Which children pluck, and, full of pride uphold, 
High hearted buccaneers, o’erjoyed that they 
An Eldorado in the grass have found, 

Which not the rich earth’s ample round 
May match in wealth, thou art more dear to me, 
Than all the prouder summer-blooms may be. 

—Lowell, To the Dandelion 

Daniel, one of the Old Testament pro¬ 
phets supposed commonly to have been the 
author of the book of Daniel, although 
certain critics believe that work to have 
been produced by some unknown writer at 
a much later period. When, in 605 B. C. 
Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, be¬ 
sieged Jerusalem for the first time, Daniel, 
a Hebrew youth of a distinguished family, 
was carried with other captives to Babylon. 
The book of Daniel tells the story of the 
conscientious youth, and of his education 
and life at the Babylonian court, of his 
utter obedience to the law in which he had 
been trained, and of his absolute faith in 
the God of his fathers. The story of 
Daniel in the lion’s den and of his three 
friends, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego 
in the fiery furnace are familiar. Daniel’s 
triumphant faith, his strength of character, 
his rare abilities as a man, and his power 
and boldness in his dealings with the king 
won the favor of Nebuchadnezzar, who 
honored him and “made him ruler over the 
whole province of Babylon and chief of the 
governors over all the wise men of Baby¬ 
lon.” The prophetic visions of Daniel are 
recorded in the last six chapters of the book 
that bears his nam5. 

Daniell, John F. (1790-1845), an Eng¬ 
lish scientist. Born in London. Professor 
of chemistry in King’s College, London, 
1831. Daniell invented the first form of 
electric battery by which a steady current 
could be obtained for a considerable length 
of time. The Daniell cell consists of a 
copper plate immersed in a solution of cop¬ 
per sulphate in an outer glass jar, and a 
zinc plate immersed in sulphuric acid in an 
inner porous cup. The gravity cell used in 
telegraph stations is a modification of 


Daniell’s, which dispenses with the porous 
cup. Daniell’s Meteorological Essays was 
the first attempt made to account for all 
the then known phenomena of the atmos¬ 
phere. He also published an essay on Ar¬ 
tificial Climate. The Royal Society con¬ 
ferred upon him all of the medals, viz., 
three, which they had at their disposal. 

Danish Literature. See Literature. 

Dante, dan'te, Alighieri (1265-1321), 
the most eminent Italian poet. He was 
born at Florence and died at Ravenna. 
His mother was a widow of some means 
and social standing, able, it appears, to 
give him a liberal education at Bologna, 
Padua, Naples, Paris, and Oxford, the 
leading universities of that early day. He 
preceded Raphael and Michelangelo by 
two centuries, and Shakespeare by three. 
In his early manhood he participated in 
the civil discord and factional wars which 
drenched the streets of his native city in 
blood. He was married to a lady of rank, 
and had seven children. About 1302 his 
property was confiscated and he was ban¬ 
ished from Florence to wander a beggar. 

When a mere youth he fell in love with 
a beautiful girl named Beatrice, whose 
early death left him to mourn. When ban¬ 
ishment from his beautiful home and beg¬ 
gary came upon him, he settled into melan¬ 
choly and wrote his Divine Comedy. In 
this poem, the greatest literature of the 
Middle Ages, Dante represents himself as 
traveling through hell and purgatory and 
heaven. The shade of Virgil conducts 
him through the dark portal, over which 
was written “All hope abandon, ye who 
enter here,” into the Inferno, the region 
of the damned. One of the most impres¬ 
sive parts of the poem is a brief description 
of the world’s great criminals undergoing 
torture there. From the Inferno Dante is 
conducted upward to Purgatory, a moun¬ 
tain rising in midocean, on the opposite 
side of the globe. Ascending from terrace 
to terrace, where mortals are undergoing 
endurable and temporary punishment pre¬ 
paratory to final happiness, they reach at 
last the top of Purgatory, where they are 
stayed by a sheet of flame. Here Dante’s 
conductor bids him farewell, telling him 
that Beatrice is on the other side. He 


DANTON—DANVILLE 


plunges boldly through and comes out in a 
paradise of forests, flowers, soft zephyrs, 
fountains, songs of birds, and music. 
Beatrice, divinely radiant, more beautiful 
even than the Beatrice of his grief, guides 
him from scene to scene, bidding him look 
back now upon earth, indescribably mean 
and insignificant in the dark and gloomy 
distance. Amid the softest melody they 
move ever upward, entering circle within 
circle, until they come before the Great 
Throne, in whose presence all eyes are 
fixed on the triumphant Redeemer, forget¬ 
ful cf self and forgetful of the sorrows and 
ills of earth, mindful only of Him who is 
the source of light and love. Here closes 
the Divine Comedy, “one of the greatest 
monuments of human genius.” Boccaccio, 
a friend who knew Dante well, has left the 
following description: 

Our poet was of middle height; his face was 
long, his nose aquiline, his jaw large, and his 
under lip protruding somewhat beyond the up¬ 
per. His eyes rather large than small; his hair 
and beard thick, crisp, and black, and his coun¬ 
tenance sad and pensive. His gait was grave and 
gentlemanlike, and his bearing, in public or pri¬ 
vate, wonderfully composed and polished. In 
meat and drink he was most temperate. Seldom 
did he speak unless spoken to, though he was 
most eloquent. In his youth he delighted in 
music and singing, and was intimate with all the 
musicians and singers of the day. He was of 
marvelous capacity and the most tenacious mem¬ 
ory ; inclined to solitude and fond of study when 
he had time for it. 

Danton, George Jacques (1 7 5 9- 

1794), a leader of the French Revolution. 
He is described as a man of gigantic 
stature, with a voice that fairly shook the 
dome of the Assembly with its roar. He 
speedily became one of the small circle 
that brought Louis XVI, Queen Marie An¬ 
toinette, and scores of royalists to the guil¬ 
lotine. When the Prussians invaded 
France, Danton’s courage saved the day. 
He and Robespierre fell out and distrust¬ 
ed each other. Each sought the other’s 
downfall. Danton was arrested on a 
charge of conniving to bring back the royal 
family. He went stoutly to the fate to 
which he had condemned others. He 
gloried to the last in his part in the revolu¬ 
tion. He gave expression to two regrets; 
one that he had been outwitted by Robes¬ 


pierre, the other that he should never 
see his wife again. See Robespierre; 
French Revolution. 

Danube, the second river of Europe. It 
rises in the Black Forest, flows through 
southern Germany, across the fertile plains 
of Austria-Hungary, through the famous 
Iron Gate of the Danube, and on to the 
Black Sea. Its course is 1,750 miles as the 
crow flies, or 2,000 miles of delightful 
windings by forest, vineyard, and field, at 
the foot of castled crags, by old Ulm, past 
the canals of imperial Vienna, beneath the 
bridges of Budapest, and under the white 
walls of high Belgrade, until lost in the 
vast lowlands at its mouth. It passes five 
capital cities. In its course it receives 500 
affluents. In volume it is the chief river 
of Europe. It carries 67,000,000 feet of 
earth to the Black Sea annually. It has 
advanced its delta ten miles since the day 
of Roman occupation. Immense sums of 
money have been expended in removing 
rock from the channel and in deepening the 
mouth. Navigation is open by treaty to 
the ships of all nations. Large steamers 
ply on the lower course. Flat-bottomed, 
shallow-draft boats ascend as far as Ulm. 
Sixty tributaries are navigable. Though 
not so celebrated in story and in song as the 
Rhine, the “Blue Danube” is one of the 
picturesque rivers of the world, especially 
in that part of its course above Belgrade 
known as the Iron Gate, where mountains 
press in on either hand. The Danube was 
for many decades the boundary of the Ro' 
man Empire. It has seen its full share of 
the noted events of European history. 

Danville, Illinois, the county seat of 
Vermillion County, is a flourishing city 
located on the Vermillion River, 120 miles 
south of Chicago. The most important 
industry is the mining and shipment of 
coal but the city also contains iron foun¬ 
dries, planing mills, woolen mills, glass 
works, brick yards, organ factories, fur¬ 
niture factories and carriage and wagon 
works. It is reached by 'several steam 
railroads and electric traction lines, and 
contains the car and machine shops of 
one of the railroads. A national sol¬ 
dier’s home is located here and it also con¬ 
tains a first class High School, several 


DANZIG—DARIUS 


churches, a Carnegie Library, a Young 
Men’s Christian Association Building and 
many fine business blocks. The popula¬ 
tion in 1900 was 16,354 but in 1910 had 
increased to 27,871. 

Danzig, or Dantzic, or Dantsic, a 

commercial city of Prussia. It is situated 
in the northeastern part of the country, on 
the Vistula River, about three miles from 
the Baltic Sea. In early days it was one of 
the four leading cities of the Hanseatic 
League, and had a large overland trade by 
packhorses and flatboats with the caravan 
routes of Asia. The goods thus obtained 
were conveyed westward by way of the 
Baltic. During the national existence of 
Poland the city was the chief port of that 
kingdom. Though still permitted a large 
degree of liberty it passed into the hands of 
Prussia in 1793. It is now a fairly pros¬ 
perous town of 160,000 inhabitants, with 
a large export trade in lumber, beet sugar, 
and grain. The grain warehouses rival 
those of Buffalo. It is the chief source of 
the supply of amber and amber ornaments. 
Ships are built here. There are also large 
mills, breweries, cordage works, and paper 
mills. It is a strongly fortified military 
post. It is still surrounded by its old walls 
and preserves its medieval appearance. The 
principal edifice of interest is the cathedral. 
Its massive tower is 248 feet high. The 
bell weighs six tons. A beautiful vaulted 
interior is supported on twenty-eight pil¬ 
lars. A fine city hall dates from the four¬ 
teenth century. Its beautiful slender spire 
contains one of the sweetest chimes in 
Europe. The houses are chiefly of brick 
and sandstone, set gable end toward the 
street. The narrow streets, lined with 
lofty, richly decorated gables, have an an¬ 
tiquated look. See Hanseatic League. 

Darby and Joan, dar'by and jon, a 
married couple, John Darby and wife, said 
to have lived in the eighteenth century in 
the village of Healaugh, in the West Rid¬ 
ing of Yorkshire. They were famous for a 
long and happy married life. The couple 
were celebrated in a ballad called “The 
Happy Old Couple,” by Henry Woodfall. 
The names are sometimes used figuratively 
to describe a peaceful but uneventful mar¬ 
ried life. 


Dardanelles, dar-da-nelz', the Helles¬ 
pont of the ancients, a narrow strait con¬ 
necting the Sea of Marmora with the 
Mediterranean and separating Europe from 
Asia. It is forty miles in length and from 
one to four in width. A swift current runs 
westward at all seasons of the year. Xerxes, 
the Persian, led his host across the Helles¬ 
pont by means of two bridges, resting on 
boats. According to Herodotus the bridges 
groaned beneath the living tide of Asi¬ 
atics for seven days and nights. In 1811 
the poet Byron swam across from Abydos 
to Sestos in a little over an hour. This 
he did in emulation of the legendary Lean- 
der, who used to swim across to visit Hero, 
and who in so doing lost his life. The 
strait is wholly within the Turkish do¬ 

minions and is strongly fortified on both 
sides by works and heavy batteries of 

Krupp guns. By treaties of 1841, 1856, 
and 1878, the powers have agreed that war¬ 
ships shall not be allowed to pass the 

Dardanelles. The measure is designed to 
protect the Porte, and especially to deny 
the Russians access to the Mediterranean. 
See Constantinople. 

Darien, da're-en, a gulf forming the 
most southwesterly extension of the Carib¬ 
bean Sea. The isthmus, extending from 
Colombia to Central America, is now 
known by the name of Panama. 

Darius, the title of several Persian 
monarchs. It is not a personal name, but 
is akin in meaning to emperor, pharaoh, 
czar, and caesar. Darius I was one of the 
greatest Persian kings. He ruled 521-486 
B. C. He organized the great Persian 
empire by dividing it into twenty prov¬ 
inces. Each province was ruled by a sa¬ 
trap. In order that the satrap might not 
have the means to set up an independent 
kingdom, the military force of the province 
was placed in charge of a commander, who 
reported to Darius independently. In each 
province a royal secretary, called the king’s 
ear, sent letter after letter by special mes¬ 
senger, reporting on the state of affairs; 
and finally a royal commissioner, a sort of 
inspector, called the king’s eye, appeared 
now and then with a military escort to see 
that all was going well. A complete sys¬ 
tem of taxgathering was established. Ex- 


DARK AGES—DARLINGTON 


cellent post roads were built, along which 
couriers, peasants and their donkeys, end¬ 
less caravans, and armies might pass. The 
longest—the east and west road from 
Sardis to Susa—was 1,500 miles in length. 
Babylon attempted to revolt, but in vain. 
The empire was reduced to order in every 
direction. The first great work of Darius 
may be summarized as the most perfectly 
organized Asiatic government the world 
has ever seen. It was essentially the form 
of government of the Turkish Empire to¬ 
day. 

His second service was the repulse of the 
barbarian tribes of the north. Just what 
these were, whether Hun, Turk, or Tartar, 
no one knows. Under the name of Scyth¬ 
ians, they had pushed their way repeatedly 
into the heart of western Asia—some au¬ 
thorities say even as far as Egypt. Darius 
led immense armies against them and set 
up stone pillars to mark the boundaries 
within which they were forbidden to enter. 
Following the subjugation of Babylon this 
great king led an immense host across the 
Bosporus on a bridge of boats, to attack the 
Scythians in the southern steppes of what 
is now Russia. Thrace was added to the 
empire, thus bringing Persia within Eu¬ 
rope to the very foot of the mountain bar¬ 
riers of Greece. Nevertheless the barba¬ 
rians were effectually checked and repulsed 
from the frontier of civilization. 

The third great enterprise of Darius 
ended in disaster. Persian arms had an¬ 
nexed India as far as the Indus. The 
Mediterranean coast was now Persian 
from the Nile to the mountains of Thes¬ 
saly. The Aegean Sea, the center of 
Greek activity, was practically “a Persian 
lake.” Whether or not Darius had a pre¬ 
vious intention of attacking Greece is not 
known, but the Greek cities on the coast 
of Asia Minor revolted. Darius reduced 
them with fire and sword, and in 492 B. C. 
sent an army and a fleet under Mardonius 
to subjugate the Greeks. The barbarians 
of Thrace mishandled his army and a 
storm off Mount Athos wrecked his ships. 
In rage he sent messengers to the Greek 
cities to demand earth and water, the sym¬ 
bols of submission. Many of the weaker 
cities complied. Athens and Sparta threw 


the envoys into pits and wells and told 
them to help themselves to all the earth 
and water they cared for. The story of the 
great king’s discomfiture may be read un¬ 
der Marathon. 

Dark Ages, a name given to the fifth, 
sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries. Dur¬ 
ing the early part of this period the civili¬ 
zation of the Romans was overturned by 
invasions of Franks, Goths, and other 
tribes. Schools became almost extinct. 
Rulers cared little for learning; literature, 
save among the monks, was a forgotten 
subject. For centuries it seemed as though 
the western world forgot faster than it 
learned. Students in particular bewail the 
loss of many art treasures destroyed by 
the rude soldiers of the north rather 
through ignorance than through malice. 
See Charlemagne. 

Darling, Grace Horsley (1815-1842), 

an English girl celebrated for her heroism 
in saving passengers from a wrecked steam¬ 
er. She was born in Northumberland. 
Her father, William Darling, was keeper 
of a lighthouse on Long Stone, one of the 
Fame Islands. The event which made her 
famous occurred in September, 1838. Very 
early one morning the lighthouse keeper 
- descried the wreck of a vessel, which proved 
to be the Forfarshire. Although a brave 
man and accustomed to scenes of danger, 
he hesitated to make any effort to save the 
passengers, such was the peril of the under¬ 
taking. Grace, however, aroused by sym¬ 
pathy for the survivors whom she could 
discern through the glass, urged her father 
to attempt a rescue and persuaded him to 
allow her to aid him. They made two trips 
and brought nine persons, all who had not 
previously perished, to the lighthouse in 
safety. The story of the young girl’s cour¬ 
age led English people to collect for her 
a purse of money amounting to about 
$3,500. 

Darlington, William (1782-1863), an 
American botanist. A native of Chester 
County, Pennsylvania. A practicing phy¬ 
sician, member of Congress, 1815, and a 
banker. An enthusiastic collector and or¬ 
ganizer of natural history societies. He 
wrote a Flora of Chester Comity, Memori¬ 
als of John Bartram and Humphrey 



DARNLEY—DARTMOUTH 


Marshall, and an Agricultural Botany. 
Dr. Darlington corresponded with emi¬ 
nent botanists of Europe; among others, 
De Candolle, to whom he sent many speci¬ 
mens at the Paris Garden of Plants. De 
Candolle honored the enthusiastic doctor 
by naming the pitcher plant of California, 
“Darlingtonia.” 

Darnley. See Mary Queen of Scots. 

Darter. See Anhinga. 

Darters, a group of small fishes, one to 
eight inches long, related to the perch. 
The smallest American species and one of 
the smallest of fishes, one to one and one- 
half inches in length, lives in the gravel 
bottoms of running streams from Minne¬ 
sota to Indiana. Dr. S. A. Forbes writes: 
“Given a supply of certain kinds of food 
nearly inaccessible to the ordinary fish, it 
is to be expected that some fishes will be¬ 
come especially fitted for its utilization. 
These darters are the mountaineers among 
fishes. Forced from the populous and fer¬ 
tile valleys of the river beds and lake bot¬ 
toms, they have taken refuge from their 
enemies in the rocky highlands, where the 
free waters play in ceaseless torrents, and 
there they have wrested from stubborn na¬ 
ture a meager living. Although dimin¬ 
ished in size by their constant struggle with 
the elements, they have developed an ac¬ 
tivity and hardihood, a vigor of life and a 
glow of high color, almost unknown among 
the easier livers of the lower lands. Not¬ 
withstanding their trivial size, they do not 
seem to be dwarfed so much as concentra¬ 
ted fishes.” Jordan adds, “Their colors 
are often very brilliant, the males of some 
species being among the most brilliant fish¬ 
es known. The sexes are usually unlike; 
the females being generally dull and 
speckled. They usually prefer clear run¬ 
ning water, where they lie on the bottom 
concealed under stones, darting, when 
frightened or hungry, with great velocity 
for a short distance, by a movement of the 
large pectorals, then stopping as suddenly. 
They rarely leave the bottom, and are 
never seen suspended in the water. A few 
species prefer a sandy bottom, where they 
lie buried in the sand, with only one eye vis¬ 
ible. The darters feed chiefly on the lar¬ 
vae of flies. The largest reach a length of 


eight inches, but the average is about two 
and one-half inches.” See Fish. 

Dartmoor, an elevated tableland and 
royal forest in Devonshire, England. The 
forest contains about 400 square miles. 
The moor lies about 2,000 feet above the 
sea, and is bleak, but affords pasturage and 
peat cuttings. Some of the peat beds are 
20 feet deep. Many of the ravines are fer¬ 
tile, and afford fine trout fishing. Dart¬ 
moor is noted for a number of prehistoric 
ruins. A large number of American sail¬ 
ors and soldiers were confined in Dart¬ 
moor prison during the Revolutionary War. 
A number were shot in an attempt to get 
away after rumors of peace had been heard. 
This unfortunate event has been stigma¬ 
tized as the “Dartmoor Massacre.” The 
inclosure embraces about thirty acres. It 
is surrounded by two high stone walls, and 
is now in use as a convict prison. See 
England. 

Dartmouth (dart'muth) College, one 

of the earliest seats of learning in New 
England. It grew out of a school at Leb¬ 
anon, Connecticut, for Indian boys. With 
$50,000 raised in England and a grant of 
44,000 acres of land, the school was moved 
to Hanover, New Hampshire. In 1770 
Eleazer Wheelock became the first presi¬ 
dent. The college was named for Lord 
Dartmouth, one of the liberal donors of 
money. The college has always been gov¬ 
erned by a board of twelve trustees, acting 
under a charter granted by George III. 
In 1816 the state undertook to control the 
institution. The trustees brought suit. 
Daniel Webster carried the famous case 
from court to court, obtaining finally a de¬ 
cision from no less a jurist than Chief 
Justice Marshall, sustaining the inviolabil¬ 
ity of the royal charter, and leaving Dart¬ 
mouth in the hands of the old trustees. 
Modern opinion runs to the effect that the 
decision is based largely on sentiment. The 
college occupies a beautiful site near the 
bank of the Connecticut. Buildings, new 
and old, and fine avenues of elms give an 
air of refinement to the grounds. The col¬ 
lege is open to men only. In addition to 
the traditional classical school there are 
schools of science, medicine, and civil en¬ 
gineering. The present value of the prop- 


DARWIN 


erty is between three and four millions. 
There are about seventy professors, and 
well on toward a thousand students. A 
host of distinguished graduates have taken 
a part in the affairs of New England and 
in the empire building of the West. 

Darwin, Charles Robert (1809-1882), 
an English scientist. He was a native of 
Shrewsbury. He was born on the same 
day as Abraham Lincoln. His father was 
an eminent physician. His grandfather, 
Erasmus Darwin, was the author of a num¬ 
ber of botanical works of an inquiring na¬ 
ture. Darwin was educated at the universi¬ 
ties of Edinburgh and Cambridge. At the 
age of twenty-two he received an appoint¬ 
ment as naturalist on board the surveying 
ship Beagle, then about to be sent out by 
the British government on a voyage of ex¬ 
ploration. This appointment was just 
what Darwin wanted. It determined his 
life work. The Beagle spent five years in 
circumnavigating the globe. Darwin re¬ 
turned with an immense store of specimens. 
Among his writings which resulted from 
the trip are his Journal of Researches, 
Zoology of the Voyage, Structure of Coral 
Reefs , Volcanic Islands, and Geological 
Observations. These give him a reputable 
standing as a man of science. 

Among questions agitating men of sci¬ 
ence at that time was that of species. Are 
we, for instance, to consider the Shetland 
pony and the Norman draught horse as 
descendants of a common wild ancestor, or 
do they represent two distinct acts of crea¬ 
tion? 

Various appointments and sources of rev¬ 
enue permitted Darwin to retire to a quiet 
country residence where he carried on a 
series of experiments with pigeons, extend¬ 
ing through a number of years. He chose 
the pigeon because it is possible to breed 
a great many successive generations in a 
short time. A pair of pigeons will have 
great grandchildren before the season is 
over. Now the pouter pigeon is famous 
for an ability to puff out the neck until it 
looks larger than the body. By selecting a 
pair of pouters, that lacked somewhat in 
the power of swelling the neck, and choos¬ 
ing from their young a pair that had still 
less of this power, and from the grand¬ 


children a pair with still less again, he was 
able to breed pigeons that were not pouters. 
In the same way other strains, as fantails, 
were bred back and back toward a type 
with ordinary tails. By a long series of 
experiments he was able to announce that 
the numerous types and colors found in the 
fancier’s dovecotes could all be bred back 
to a type resembling the rock pigeon that 
nests in the cliffs of the Mediterranean; 
from which he argued that our tame 
pigeons, of whatever color or variety, are 
derived from a single ancestral type, the 
rock pigeon. The result of his observa¬ 
tions he made public in a famous volume 
called The Origin of Species. 

Two phrases, “natural selection,” and 
“the survival of the fittest,” are heard fre¬ 
quently in connection with Darwin’s the¬ 
ories. The strongest, and presumably the 
handsomest members of a species, naturally 
choose each other and improve the race, 
while the weaker, less favored members, 
especially if food be scarce or conditions 
unfavorable, are forced to the wall. In 
.this way, by a process of natural selection 
a species may change in a marked degree. 

The other phrase may be understood bet¬ 
ter perhaps by an illustration, drawn from 
the common muskrat that lives in shallow 
waters and burrows in banks. In case the 
homes of these animals were to dry up 
gradually, the theory is that those mem¬ 
bers of the species least able to do with less 
water would perish, while the others lived. 
This process, being kept up from genera¬ 
tion to generation as the sloughs dried up 
more and more, would finally develop a 
species of dry-land muskrats. Out of each 
generation, the survival of the fittest mem¬ 
bers for a land life would develop a species 
of muskrats as able to live without bodies 
of water as are the house rats. 

To illustrate further, in a hawk-infested 
district, the swiftest, shiftiest sparrows of 
each generation escape the hawks. The 
survival of the fittest members of each gen¬ 
eration would develop in time a species of 
swift, alert sparrows, practically safe from 
old-fashioned hawks. In the meantime, the 
starvation of hawks unable to catch spar¬ 
rows, and the survival of the fittest hawks 
of each generation would, in time, develop 


DATE—D. A. R. 


a new species of extraordinarily quick spar- 
rowhawks. Thus we should have a new 
species of sparrows and a corresponding 
new species of hawks. Many other exam¬ 
ples might be given, but these are sufficient. 

Other factors enter, of .course, into Dar¬ 
win’s theory, but natural selection and the 
survival of the fittest account, in his judg¬ 
ment, with changes of climate, soil, and 
moisture, for numerous species and varie¬ 
ties of the violet, Indian corn, sheep—in 
short, of both plants and animals. An ex¬ 
tension of the Darwinian theory, which is 
closely connected with evolution, has led 
to many startling conclusions; for instance, 
that the whale and the seal are descendants 
of former land animals, and that the re- 
- mote ancestors of birds were reptiles, etc. 

At first these doctrines met with opposi¬ 
tion from those who considered them ir¬ 
reverent. Agassiz was one of those who 
stood stoutly for separate acts of creation 
Scientific men now, however, have very 
generally accepted Darwin’s theories; hold¬ 
ing it quite as reverent to trace varieties 
and species to the working of great laws 
as to assert that the Creator established 
fixed types which defy the influence of time 
and season. 

In a late work, The Descent of Man , 
published 1871, Darwin maintained that 
man is descended from an early ancestor, 
having more or less of a monkey-like na¬ 
ture. For this theory he was bitterly as¬ 
sailed as ungodly. His favorite retort was 
that he would rather be regarded as the 
descendant of a monkey than of some peo¬ 
ple that might be named. Darwin was 
buried fittingly in Westminster Abbey. 

The present generation think of him who bore 
this name as a rare combination of genius, in¬ 
dustry, and unswerving veracity, who earned his 
place among the most famous men of his age 
by sheer native power, in the teeth of a gale of 
popular prejudice, and, notwithstanding provoca¬ 
tions which might have excused any outbreak, 
kept himself clear of all envy, hatred, and malice, 
nor dealt otherwise than fairly and justly with 
the unfairness and injustice showered upon him; 
while to the end of his days he was ready to 
listen with patience and respect to the most in¬ 
significant of reasonable objectors.—Huxley. 

See Wallace; Cross-Fertilization; 
Mutation. 

Date. See Chronology. 


Date Palm, a fruit-bearing palm tree, 
ranging from the Canary Islands, through 
North Africa and Arabia, to India. The 
date palm is a lofty tree, thirty to one hun¬ 
dred feet in height. It bears clusters of 
150 to 200 plum dates. A bunch weighs 
20 to 25 pounds. A tree yields from 10 to 
30 clusters a year. Dates are rich in sugar. 
The dried dates of commerce contain half 
their own weight of sugar. Dates are the 
principal production of the Arabs, and are 
their chief article of diet. Cakes of dried 
dates are their food on caravan trips. De¬ 
prive the Arab of the camel and the date, 
and vast sections of country would be de¬ 
populated. It is the chief plant of the 
oases of the Sahara. The crown of the tree 
is eaten as a palm cabbage; a fermented 
liquor is made from the fruit, and also from 
the sap. Baskets, bags, mats, wicker work, 
fans, walkingsticks, and ropes are made 
of the leaf-stalks, leaf-blades,, and fiber. 
Portions of southern California and Ari¬ 
zona, dependent on irrigation and farthest 
removed from the cooling influence of the 
sea, have been found well adapted to date 
culture and have begun even to make ship¬ 
ments to the trade. See Palm. 

Daudet, Alphonse, al-fons d5-da 
(1840-1897), a French novelist. He was 
born at Nimes, and educated at the Ly¬ 
ons Lycee. Fie went to Paris and began 
to write verse when about seventeen years 
of age. His work met with some degree 
of success and he continued to write, con¬ 
tributing both prose and poetry to various 
periodicals. From 1862 to 1872 he pro¬ 
duced a number of dramas which were 
only moderately successful. He produced 
during the remainder of his life many nov¬ 
els and humorous writings. Among those 
most popular in America are Jack, Kings 
in Exile, Letters from My Mill, Tartarin 
of Tarascon, a good humored satire di¬ 
rected toward the author’s compatriots, and 
Tart arm on the Alps. 

Daughters of the American Revolu¬ 
tion, a patriotic society. The society was 
organized in the city of Washington, 
D. C., October 11, 1890. The headquar¬ 
ters are in Washington. Its present mem¬ 
bership (1910) is reported by the secre¬ 
tary-general to be 60,250. One thousand 


/ 


DAUPHIN—DAVID 


state chapters exist in forty-five states and 
territories and the District of Columbia, 
presided over by regents. Chapter re¬ 
gents have been appointed for England, 
Cuba, and the Philippines. Any woman 
may be eligible for membership who is of 
the age of eighteen years, and who is de¬ 
scended from an ancestor who, “with un¬ 
failing loyalty, rendered material aid to 
the cause of independence as a recognized 
patriot, as soldier or sailor, or as a civil 
officer in one of the several colonies or 
states, or of the United Colonies or States,” 
provided that the applicant shall be accept¬ 
able to the society. Every application 
for membership must be indorsed by at 
least one member of the national society, 
and is then submitted to the registrars-gen- 
eral, who report on the question of eligi¬ 
bility to the board of management, and 
upon its approval the applicant is enrolled 
as a member. 

Dauphin, dau'fin, a title given the eldest 
son of the French king. It was original¬ 
ly the title of the lord of the province 
of Dauphine. The last of these, dying 
without heir, bequeathed his territory to 
the French crown on condition that the 
king’s first born son should be the Dauphin, 
or lord of Dauphine. The Dauphin’s 
wife is known in history as the Dauphin- 
ess. In case the king had no son, the 
title was not given to his heir. The term 
is thought to be derived from the dolphin, 
worn as a symbol by the house of Dau¬ 
phine. France being a republic, the title 
is now extinct. The Dauphin of France 
corresponds to the Prince of Wales in 
England, and to the Crown Prince of 
Germany. 

Davenport, the most important com¬ 
mercial city of Iowa. It is the county seat 
of Scott County and is situated on the Mis¬ 
sissippi River, one hundred fifty-four miles 
from Chicago and opposite Rock Island, 
Illinois. The population in 1910 was 
43,028. It is served by the Chicago, Rock 
Island and Pacific, the Chicago, Milwaukee 
and St. Paul, the Chicago, Burlington and 
Quincy, and by other railroads, while steam¬ 
boat communication with all points between 
St. Paul and St. Louis add to its advantages. 
Davenport is in a rich agricultural region 


and coal is found nearby. Among manu¬ 
factured products are soap, glucose, cigars, 
beer, flour, woolen goods, pottery, cordage, 
lumber, farming tools, carriages, and ma¬ 
chinery. The city is built on the slope of a 
bluff which extends for three miles along 
the river. Two fine bridges connect it with 
the city of Rock Island. On the island, 
which is crossed by the wagon bridge, are 
situated the United States Arsenal and 
other Government buildings. The city has 
two opera houses, several hospitals, a pub¬ 
lic library, and many other handsome build¬ 
ings. The State Orphanage, Saint Am¬ 
brose College, the Academy of the Immac¬ 
ulate Conception and other educational in¬ 
stitutions are located there. The Academy 
of Natural Sciences, organized in 1867, has 
a large scientific library and an interesting 
collection of mound-builder relics. 

David, a central figure in Hebrew his¬ 
tory and literature. According to Ussher, 
he was born 1085 and died 1015 B. C. 
The lad’s life with his father Jesse’s 
flocks; the friendship of Jonathan; the 
jealousy of Saul; David’s skill on the harp 
and skill with the sling; the death of the 
Philistine giant, Goliath; the winning of 
Abigail, his wife; the love of his sister 
Zeruiah, and the devotion of her three sons, 
Joab, Abishai, and Asahel; the extension 
of the kingdom of Israel over the surround¬ 
ing heathen nations; his great crime 
toward Bathsheba and her husband Uriah; 
the faithfulness of the prophet Nathan; 
the rebellion of Absalom; the death of Ab¬ 
ner ; and David’s preparations for the 
building of a great temple,—in all a reign 
of thirty-three years,—form one of the 
most interesting portions of the scriptural 
narrative. The Psalms of David, the 
sweet singer of Israel, rank with the fin¬ 
est examples of poetry in the Hebrew or 
any other language. In the King James 
Bible, that is to say, the common edition, 
the collection includes 150 psalms. It is 
the hymn book of the Hebrew people, 
called in their tongue the book of praises. 
In the original most of these psalms or 
sacred songs have titles. The title gives 
the name of the poem, the tune to which 
it is to be chanted, the occasion on which 
it is to be used, and the name of the au- 


DAVID COPPERFIELD—DAVIS 


thor. According to these titles, one psalm 
was written by Moses, seventy-three by 
David, twenty-six by Solomon, and others 
by various writers. Thirty-four, assigned 
to no particular author, are called orphans 
by the Hebrews. Most critics think that 
David really wrote about forty of the se¬ 
lections. See Bible. 

David Copperfield, a novel by Charles 
Dickens. It was published in monthly 
installments, the first chapters appearing 
in May, 1849. The story was completed 
and was published in book form the fol¬ 
lowing year. David, Copperfield is gener¬ 
ally considered Dickens’ masterpiece. It 
is without real plot. It is a simple story 
of the life of David from the day of his 
birth until, well on in years, his charac¬ 
ter is formed, and he is settled apparently 
in life. It contains considerable autobi¬ 
ography, more or less disguised. Digres¬ 
sions and many minor incidents, and even 
plots occur. This is in accordance with 
Dickens’ usual method, and must not be 
regarded as indicative of inability on the 
author’s part to invent and carry out a 
plot. Barnaby Rudge and many of his 
short stories prove him quite capable of 
this. The manner of publication must be 
held accountable for this fault, if fault 
it be. Nearly all of Dickens’ novels were 
written in installments, not from the au¬ 
thor’s choice, but because public and pub¬ 
lishers demanded it. Each installment 
must contain incidents of positive interest 
and still leave the writer ample freedom 
• for the next installment, which was sel¬ 
dom written until after the publication of 
the previous one. Under such conditions, 
a plot, in the technical sense of the word, 
is impossible. To many readers, however, 
a story like David Copperfield , while less 
exciting, is more pleasing because more real 
than one constructed on more artistic lines. 
The average individual does not become 
entangled in complicated “plots.” As he 
passes through his own varied experiences 
he is touched here and there by the lives 
and experiences of others, the incidents of 
whose careers become more or less involved 
with his own. This is the case with Da¬ 
vid Copperfield, which accounts in large 
measure for its popularity. 


Dickens himself has said: “Like many 
fond parents I have in my heart of hearts 
a favorite child—and his name is David 
Copperfield.” This has been explained on 
the ground that it is a story of his own 
life. It is evident to the sympathetic read¬ 
er that, whether David is or is not Charles 
Dickens, Charles Dickens was certainly 
“David” while he wrote the story/ that 
he lived, worked, and suffered in the scenes 
through which David passes; that to him 
Micawber was a real, if unavailing, friend : 
Ham Peggotty a hero, Steerforth an ad¬ 
mired and disappointing companion, Lit¬ 
tle Emily a dearly loved sister, and Agnes 
a guiding spirit. 

The style of David Copperfield pre¬ 
sents, in a more marked degree than any 
other of his works, Dickens’ peculiar char¬ 
acteristics. It is more easy and sponta¬ 
neous ; the pathos is more realistic; the 
humor, if less exuberant, is of a finer and 
more enduring quality. Nowhere does the 
general tone and character of expression 
so readily change to suit thought and feel¬ 
ing. The freedom given by the autobio¬ 
graphical form may account for this. 
There are many instances of most vivid 
description in the story. Mr. Peggotty’s 
home in the boat, the Rookery, Betsy Trot- 
wood’s cottage, are clear pictures in the 
minds of thousands. It would be difficult 
to find in literature a nobler description 
of a storm than that in which Ham Peg¬ 
gotty gives up his life. Little Emily, with 
her false lover and her faithful uncle ; Rosa 
Dartle, with her sad experiences and her 
awful inner life; Dr. Strong; his young 
wife Annie; their troubles with Jack Mal- 
don and Uriah Heep, are stories within 
a story, complete and beautiful. 

No one can ever believe this narrative, in 
the reading, more than I have believed it in the 
writing.—Dickens’ Preface to David Copperfield. 

Agnes Wickfield in David Copperfield is the 
most charming female character in the whole 
range of fiction.—Chambers. 

In David Copperfield it is not difficult to trace 
the maturing power of experience, which points 
to the highest aims, and rejects those adventitious 
sources of attraction which are so tempting in 
the early career of genius.—Knight. 

Davis, Jefferson (1808-1889), presi¬ 
dent of the Confederate States. He was 


DAVIS—DAVY 


a native of Kentucky, but was reared in 
Mississippi. He was graduated from West 
Point in 1828, and served in the Black 
Hawk War of 1831-2. In 1835 he resigned 
and undertook the management of a cot¬ 
ton plantation in Mississippi. In 1845 he 
took his seat in Congress, but resigned 
to lead a regiment of Mississippi volun¬ 
teers in the Mexican War. In 1850 he 
was elected to the United States Senate. 
During President Pierce’s administration 
he was secretary of war, and again took 
his seat in the Senate in 1857. He was 
a constant advocate of the doctrine of 
state rights. When his state seceded he 
made a farewell speech in the Senate, Feb¬ 
ruary 9, 1861. The provisional congress 
of the Confederacy chose him president, 
a position which he held continuously until 
the collapse of the Confederacy. At the 
beginning of the war he made an appeal 
to the North to allow the South to secede 
peaceably, claiming that the Southern 
States had a perfect right to do so under the 
Constitution. Whether due to circum¬ 
stances, or whether the duties of the presi¬ 
dency required him to do disagreeable 
things, the fact remains that Davis was 
not respected, either in the North or in 
the South, as were Lee and Stonewall 
Jackson. The South considered him arbi¬ 
trary and tyrannical; the North held him 
responsible for the sufferings of soldiers 
in the Southern prisons. At the close of 
the war he was arrested and conveyed to 
Fortress Monroe. The grand jury of the 
District of Columbia indicted him for 
treason. He lay in prison for about two 
years without being brought to trial. He 
was then released on bail, Horace Greeley 
being one of the bailsmen. After his re¬ 
lease by the general amnesty act of 1868 
he went into business at the head of an 
insurance company, retiring finally to his 
estate in Mississippi. His remains were 
interred at Holly Wood Cemetery, Rich¬ 
mond, Virginia. His views of the Civil 
War are worded in The Rise and Fall of 
the Confederate Government, published in 
1881. See Secession. 

Davis, Mrs. Rebecca Blaine Hard¬ 
ing (1831-1910), an American story writer. 
She was born in Washington, Pennsylva¬ 


nia. She was the first American writer 
to make use of the labor question in fiction. 
Her novels include Life in the Iron Mills 
—A Story of Today, published later as 
Margaret Howth, A Law unto Herself, 
Waiting for the Verdiet, and others. Mrs. 
Davis has written many short stories which 
have been more widely read than her nov¬ 
els. Her style is simple and direct, and 
the tone of her stories invariably whole¬ 
some. 

Davis, Richard Harding (1864-1916), 
an American novelist, war correspondent, 
and writer. He was a son of Rebecca 
Harding Davis, and was born in Phil¬ 
adelphia. He received his education at 
Lehigh University, and began his journal¬ 
istic life in Philadelphia. Gallegher, his 
first literary success, is a story from his 
own newspaper experiences. It appeared 
with other stories in 1891. Since that time 
Davis has produced many novels and short 
stories which have won popular favor. 
Soldiers of Fortune, Van Bibber and Oth¬ 
ers, The King’s Jackal, The Bar Sinister, 
and The Princess Aline are among those 
best known. Davis acted as war corre¬ 
spondent during the Spanish-American 
War, in South Africa, and in Europe. 

Davy, Humphry (1778-1829), an 
eminent English chemist. He was born 
at Penzance, Cornwall. As a lad he was 
a fine hand at telling stories and setting 
off fireworks. At first a surgeon’s assist¬ 
ant he became interested in chemistry, and 
held various positions as a lecturer. He 
became president of the Royal Society in 
1820. Davy traveled extensively, and died, 
on the way home, at Geneva in 1829. Davy 
discovered several new elements, including 
potassium, barium, calcium, strontium, and 
magnesium. His early talent for storytell¬ 
ing developed into famous ability as a lec¬ 
turer. It became quite the rage in Lon¬ 
don to attend Davy’s lectures. Davy’s 
great service to workingmen remains to 
be noticed. The greatest danger to which 
coal miners in their underground life are 
exposed is that of the explosion of fire 
damp, an inflammable gas that collects in 
the mines. It is almost as dangerous as 
gunpowder, and being frequently set off 
by the miners’ lamps, caused great loss 


DAVY JONES—DAY 


of life. Davy collected fire damp from the 
coal mines of Newcastle and began ex¬ 
perimenting. He first found out that it 
is made of carbon and hydrogen; then he 
found that it must be mixed with a large 
quantity of air before it will explode; next 
that it will not explode unless very hot; 
and, lastly, that but little heat is produced 
by an explosion. Davy reasoned that, if 
the flame of a miner’s lamp could be pre¬ 
vented from heating the fire damp, there 
would be no likelihood of an explosion. 
He surrounded the flame of a lamp by a 
cylinder of fine wire gauze. The portion 
of fire damp entering through the gauze ex¬ 
ploded in tiny puffs without creating heat; 
the gauze prevented the lamp flame from 
reaching and heating the fire damp outside, 
and the problem was solved. Coal miners 
carry the Davy safety lamp today. The 
inventor was made Sir Humphry Davy 
in recognition of his service. See Damp. 

Davy Jones, a name in common use 
among sailors, especially in the expression 
“Go to Davy Jones’ locker,” which signi¬ 
fies to go to the bottom of the sea. The 
origin of the name is uncertain, some claim¬ 
ing that it is from Jonah. It would seem 
that Davy Jones is the ruler of the evil 
spirits of the s?a. 

Dawson, Sir John William (1820- 
1899), a celebrated Canadian geologist and 
educator. He was born in Nova Scotia, edu¬ 
cated at Edinburgh University, and at the 
age of thirty became Superintendent of 
Education in the province where he was 
born. Five years later he became prin¬ 
cipal as well as professor of natural his¬ 
tory, at McGill College at Montreal, with 
which institution he was connected for 
nearly forty years. He established the 
McGill Normal School in 1857 and was 
its first principal; and a school of en¬ 
gineering the following year. As a factor 
in Canadian educational development, he 
stands among the first. He early took an 
interest in geology and he ranks among 
the great men in that field. Most of his 
publications were along that line. Aside 
from many treatises on the geology and 
natural history of Canada may be men¬ 
tioned Agriculture for Schools, The Story 
of the Earth and Man, The Origin of the 


World, and Modern Ideas of Evolution. 
He was a member of the Royal Society 
(London), was knighted in 1883, and was 
president of the British Association in 
1886. 

Day, an astronomical term of varied 
meaning. Ordinarily it is the period of 
light, as distinguished from the darkness 
or night. It also means a period of twen¬ 
ty-four hours. In the latter sense the day 
of the Babylonians, from whom we have 
many astronomical ideas, began at sunrise. 
Among the Jews and Greeks the day be¬ 
gan at the going down of the sun. This was 
formerly the observance in New England. 
All labor and play ceased at sunset Sat¬ 
urday. As soon as the sun went down 
Sunday the children of the village burst 
forth with many shouts to play. Among 
the Egyptians and Romans the day began 
at midnight. Our day, derived from legal 
sources, that is to say, from Roman law, 
has finally prevailed over the Hebrew day 
as derived from the Bible. The question 
of convenience has been a determining 
factor. It would be gain in many respects 
if the twenty-four hours of the day were 
numbered from one to twenty-four consecu¬ 
tively, making 2 p. m. 14 o’clock, etc. 

The day, as distinguished from the night, 
is of uniform length only on the equator. 
The summer day lengthens as we go from 
the equator toward either pole. The long¬ 
est day for each locality equals the longest 
night for the same locality, but it comes six 
months later. 

Dayton, an important city of Mont¬ 
gomery County, Ohio, is located on the 
Miami River, about 60 miles northeast of 
Cincinnati. It is an important railroad cen¬ 
ter and manufacturing point. The city is 
beautifully laid out with broad streets and 
fine buildings. 

The public school system is of high or¬ 
der and in addition there, are located in the 
city the United Brethren Theological Semi¬ 
nary, St. Mary’s Institute and the Academy 
of Notre Dame. Here also are located a 
soldiers’ home, hospitals, a state insane 
asylum, and other institutions. 

The city has large water power and 
among its manufactured products are cash 
registers, railway cars, oil-mill machinery, 


DEACONESS—DEAF-MUTES 


steam pumps, sewing machines, automobiles, 
engines, flour, sash and doors, and other 
articles. In April, 1913, a disastrous over¬ 
flow of the river caused great loss of life 
and property. The population in 1910 was 
116,577. 

Deaconess, one of an order of women 
in the early Christian church. Deaconesses 
assisted in the baptism of women, instruct¬ 
ed girls in their catechism, took care of the 
sick, helped the poor, and were present at 
interviews of the clergy with women. They 
were usually widows and were required to 
remain unmarried. At first a woman could 
not belong to the order until she was sixty 
years old, but later forty-five years was 
made the minimum age. The order became 
extinct in the twelfth century. In the nine¬ 
teenth century the order of deaconesses was 
revived in several Protestant churches, no¬ 
tably the Protestant Episcopal, the Metho¬ 
dist Episcopal and the Lutheran churches. 
Usually two years’ training is required be¬ 
fore a woman is received into the order. 
The deaconesses of any one parish reside 
together in a home established for that pur¬ 
pose. Their work is largely among women 
and children. They nurse the sick, feed 
the hungry, clothe the poor, rescue the sin¬ 
ful, and comfort the sorrowful. They are 
also trained to assist in religious services 
and to give religious instruction. 

Dead Letter Office. See Post Office. 

Dead Sea, a celebrated lake of Pales¬ 
tine. It occupies a sunken valley at the 
eastern foot of the Lebanon Mountains. 
It is the deepest known inland depression 
in the earth’s surface. The lake is forty- 
six miles in length and from five to nine 
miles wide. Its surface is 1,292 feet be¬ 
low the surface of the Mediterranean. The 
depth of the water varies from three feet 
to thirteen hundred feet at the center of 
the northern section. The River Jordan 
is the chief tributary. There is no outlet. 
The waters are charmingly blue, but bit¬ 
ter to the taste, and fetid. It is several 
times as salt as the ocean. People who 
go in bathing cannot sink. They require 
to use care, or else the body assumes an 
inconvenient position—feet up and head 
down. The only life in the water con¬ 
sists of a certain low animalcule. The 


east and the west shores are steep limestone 
cliffs. The northern shore is a brackish, 
muddy flat, with here and there a dead 
tree incrusted with salt. The southern 
shore is equally dreary and desolate. It 
is marked by a long ridge of rock salt, 
300 feet high, called by the Arabs the ridge 
of Sodom. There are no present indica¬ 
tions that the valley ever was inhabited; 
there is little life of any sort in the vicin¬ 
ity, though a few bird-inhabited thickets 
of oleander are found on the shore and in 
the valleys of tributaries. Twenty-five 
per cent of the water consists of solid mat¬ 
ter; seven per cent is salt. Divers bring 
up salt from the bottom of the sea, dry it 
in the sun, and carry it on camels to mar¬ 
ket at Jerusalem. This lake has been 
called also the Sea of Sodom and the Salt 
Sea. See Caspian; Death Valley. 

Deaf-Mutes, persons both deaf and 
dumb. Inability to talk follows from the 
inability to hear. Deafness is due to some 
defect in the ear, of course. It may be 
traced often to scrofula and other diseases. 
The children of a marriage between first 
cousins are particularly liable to be deaf. 
A deaf person is wonderfully imitative. 
The necessity of communicating by signs 
when words fail has led to the gradual 
evolution of a sign language, now regu¬ 
larly taught in deaf-mute schools, or 
schools for defectives, as they are called. 

The ancients and the medieval writers 
considered it hardly possible to educate a 
mute. Accounts of individual instruction 
appear with increasing frequency, however; 
and in 1778, during the progress of the 
American Revolution, the first public 
school for deaf-mutes was established at 
Leipsic. Public institutions for gratuitous 
instruction were soon established in other 
European countries. The first in America 
was founded in 1817 at Hartford. They 
are now the rule in the various states and 
provinces. 

In addition to the sign language, which 
has been compared to that of the plains 
Indian, sign alphabets have been devised. 
Spelling by hand is rather slow, but it is 
accurate. There is no special difficulty, of 
course, in teaching deaf-mutes to read and 
to write with facility. Educated deaf- 


DEATH VALLEY—DEBATE 


mutes prefer to communicate by writing. 
There are between 300 and 400 schools 
for deaf-mutes in the various countries of 
Europe, with a few in Japan and India. 
There are seven in Canada; in the United 
States 128 schools are attended by about 
10,000 pupils. There were 40,592 deaf- 
mutes in the United States in June, 1900— 
one to each 2,400 of population. 

Death Valley, an alkaline valley in a 
desert region in California, on the Arizona 
border. It occupies a depression 276 feet 
below the level of the sea. It is the low¬ 
est depression in the United States. Mount 
Whitney, 14,500 feet high, one of the 
highest elevations in the United States, is 
only seventy-five miles away. The valley 
is seventy miles long and is ten to twenty 
miles in width from foothills to foothills. 
Of a party of thirty explorers who entered 
the valley in 1849, looking for gold, all 
but twelve perished; whence the name. In 
summer it is said to be one of the driest, 
hottest places on the face of the globe. The 
thermometer reaches 130 in the shade. The 
nights are too hot for sleep. The valley 
is surrounded by volcanic mountains that 
shut out moisture. Terrific whirlwinds 
cross the plain. They are gyratory columns 
of sand dust—sand augers, they are called 
—thousands of feet in height, reaching to 
the clouds, we might say, only there are 
no clouds in the pitiless sky. Tourists may 
enter the valley late in autumn, but must 
carry water for man and beast. The one 
bitter alkaline stream that enters the valley 
is soon swallowed up in the sand. Springs 
are far apart. Visitors to the region find 
a sandy, gray waste, barren save for the 
stunted cacti and dwarf greasewood. . A 
few crows, starved jackrabbits, slinking 
coyotes, rattlesnakes, buzzards, and horned 
toads manage to pick up a living. The 
surrounding mountain ranges are rich in 
minerals, but the mines are difficult to work 
for want of water. 

The Death Valley is the lowest of a se¬ 
ries of old lake beds found in the vicinity. 
A salt marsh or sump follows the center 
of the valley almost from end to end. This 
sump is seemingly bottomless. The long¬ 
est poles are swallowed up. A stone is 

said to have carried a line down two hun- 
11-24 


dred feet without stopping. The sump is 
about half as wide as the valley. Near the 
middle it contracts to two miles in width 
and is shallow. Here a wagon road was 
constructed for the long mule trains 
once engaged in hauling borax from the 
valley. There are a few footpaths also, 
but many men and beasts have lost their 
lives in trying to cross the swamp. 

See Borax. 

Debate, a consideration of a two-sided 
question. In one sense of the word a per¬ 
son may debate alone. Hamlet’s famous 
soliloquy, “To be or not to be,” was a de¬ 
bate with himself. When Caesar rode up 
and down on the bank of the Rubicon he 
was arguing both sides of a question with 
himself. He ended the debate by issuing 
orders to cross the boundary and march on 
Rome. 

In parliamentary usage a debate is a 
series of speeches, long or short, some fa¬ 
voring, others opposing, a proposed meas¬ 
ure. If all speakers hold the same view 
such a consideration of a question can 
hardly be called a debate. A prearranged 
debate between two speakers, as two rival 
candidates for office, is called a joint 
debate. In 1858 Abraham Lincoln, who 
had been chosen by the Republicans to con¬ 
test the United States senatorship, chal¬ 
lenged Stephen A. Douglas, the incumbent, 
and the most effective stump orator in the 
country, to a series of joint debates. The 
fame of the speakers and the burning ques¬ 
tion of free soil drew tremendous audi¬ 
ences. Douglas won reelection at the hands 
of the Illinois legislature, but Lincoln 
drove his opponent into a logical pocket, 
and won a reputation that brought him 
the nomination for the presidency. To 
succeed in joint debate a speaker must 
carry his end of the argument well, and 
not only that, he must be prompt to re¬ 
fute the arguments of his adversary and 
quick to take advantage of an opponent’s 
errors. Daniel Webster made a strong 
point of restating an opponent’s argument, 
fairly strengthening it, and then crushing 
it with a powerful sentence or two. 

The greatest arena for debate in the 
world is the British House of Commons. 
The measures that come before that body 


DEBS 


may concern a single parish or even a 
single parishioner in Wales, or they may be 
measures affecting the welfare of half the 
civilized world. The great debates are like¬ 
ly to come off after dinner, that is to say, 
about eight or nine o’clock at night. A 
long table occupies the center of the hall. 
Along one side sit the members of the min¬ 
istry with their books and documents before 
them. Directly across the table, and facing 
them, sit the leaders of the opposition. The 
members of the government party and of 
the opposition sit behind their leaders on 
long benches, one tier rising behind an¬ 
other, but all facing the center. The speak¬ 
ers rise in order, the younger men first, a 
speaker on one side, then a speaker on the 
other. The debate is closed by the ac¬ 
knowledged leader of each party, usually 
an ex-minister for the opposition and the 
prime minister for the government. Then 
the vote or decision is taken. 

A school debate is an excellent method 
of arousing interest in geographical, his¬ 
torical, and social questions. In an ele¬ 
mentary debate, designed to enliven school 
work, it is not necessary to be formal. A 
pupil may be appointed to preside. A 
leader should be appointed for each side 
of the question. A day or a week may be 
allowed for preparation. It is customary 
for the leader on the affirmative to speak 
first. Then comes the leader on the nega¬ 
tive side. Other speakers follow, as ar¬ 
ranged by the leaders. At the close of the 
debate the leaders sum up for their re¬ 
spective sides. The affirmative side is the 
more difficult. It is considered proper 
courtesy, therefore, to reverse the order in 
closing, and to allow the leader on the 
affirmative side to speak last. In their clos¬ 
ing speeches the leaders are expected to in¬ 
troduce no new arguments, but to confine 
themselves to refutation and summary. 
A decision by judges adds interest to a de¬ 
bate. No formal rules can be laid down 
for a decision ; but a judge is justified in 
considering both argument and skill of 
presentation. The burden of proof is held 
to lie on the affirmative side. If the argu¬ 
ments of the affirmative be refuted, the 
negative wins, even without presenting ar¬ 
guments on the negative side. It is well 


for the instructor to follow with a review 
of the debate and suggestions for improve¬ 
ment. 

The following topics were suggested in 

a recent Winona Normal School bulletin 

as suitable for an advanced class in geog- 

« 

raphy: 

1. Resolved, That Minnesota is a more de¬ 
sirable state to live in than California. 

2. Resolved, That the acquisition of the 
Philippine Islands will ultimately prove of more 
value to the United States than the purchase of 
Alaska. 

3. Resolved, That national expositions do not 
benefit the countries in which they are held. 

4. Resolved, That the earth is spheroidal in 
shape and that we live on the outside of it. 

5. Resolved, That Arctic explorations should 
be continued. 

6. Resolved, That the United States Weather 
Bureau is of sufficient value to justify its con¬ 
tinuance. 

7. Resolved, That Canada should be an¬ 
nexed to the United States. 

8. Resolved, That in the future the Amazon 
will be of more commercial importance than the 
Mississippi. 

9. Resolved, That on account of location 
Duluth is bound to become as great a city as 
Chicago. 

10. Resolved, That the natural resources of 
Wisconsin are as great as those of Minnesota. 

11. Resolved, That there are as many places 
of interest in Chicago as there are in New York 
City. 

12. Resolved, That it is better to see and 
know your own country before traveling abroad. 

13. Resolved, That navigation on the upper 
Mississippi is of sufficient importance to justify 
the national government in opening and main¬ 
taining a six-foot channel to St. Paul and Minne¬ 
apolis. 

14. Resolved, That the Panama canal will be 
of sufficient value to justify the government in 
building it. 

15. Resolved, That the victory of Japan over 
Russia advanced the interests of civilization. 

16. Resolved, That the United States gov¬ 
ernment should spend less money in improving 
rivers, and more in irrigating the arid lands of 
this country. 

Debs, Eugene Victor ( 1855-), an 

American socialist and labor leader. He 
was born at Terre Haute, Indiana. His 
education was received in the common 
schools, and at an early age he be¬ 
came a locomotive fireman. He was sent 
to the Indiana legislature in 1885, later 
held an office in the Brotherhood of Loco- 


DEBTS 


motive Firemen and was president of the 
American Railway Union from 1893 to 
1897. He conducted the railway strike of 
1894, and while this was in progress was 
charged with conspiracy. He was acquit¬ 
ted but was imprisoned for six months for 
contempt of court. He became prominent 
among the socialists of the country and in 
1900 was the Social Democratic candidate 
for the presidency, and in 1904 and again 
in 1908 was the Socialist candidate for the 
same office. 

Debts, National, amounts owed by gov¬ 
ernments. A national debt is in the form 
usually of bonds bearing a fixed rate of in¬ 
terest. Sometimes the bonds are sold for 
face, sometimes at a premium, and some¬ 
times at a ruinous discount—all according 
to the credit of the borrowing government 
and the amount of money waiting for in¬ 
vestment. War is the great cause of public 
debt. The Spanish-American War, the 
Boer War, and the Russo-Japanese War 
increased the debts of the countries con¬ 
cerned. Government bonds are attractive 
for several reasons. They are considered 
safe. They are exempt usually from tax¬ 
ation ; they are converted readily into cash, 
and may be had in large or small blocks 
to suit, saving the expense and detail of 
looking after many small loans. 

According to the Statesman’s Year Book 
nearly if not all civilized countries, even 
frugal Switzerland, have a bonded indebt¬ 
edness. France has the largest national 
debt. It was increased greatly by the ex¬ 
pense of the Franco-Prussian War and the 
indemnity demanded by the Germans. The 
public debt of Great Britain is considered 
one of the most remarkable in the world. 
It has been formed largely by the expense 
of acquiring and administering so many 
colonial possessions. No attempt is being 
made to reduce the principal. 

The debt of the United States began with 
borrowing money to pay off the expenses 
and the debts of the Revolutionary War. 
Under Washington’s first administration, 
and thereafter, for a time, the public debt 
was about $75,000,000. The purchase of 
Louisiana increased the debt to $86,000,- 
000. This amount was diminished year by 
year, but ran up again on account of the 


War of 1812 to about $125,000,000; but 
by 1835 this debt had been reduced to a 
nominal $37,000, with $40,000,000 on de¬ 
posit in various banks to the credit of the 
United States. The Mexican War created 
a new debt of $70,000,000, which had not 
been materially reduced before the enor¬ 
mous expense of the Civil War created a 
national debt unprecedented for rapidity 
of growth. In February, 1861, Congress 
authorized the secretary of the treasury to 
borrow $25,000,000; a year later a similar 
act authorized the borrowing of $250,000,- 
000; and this was but one of many similar 
acts. The United States debt reached its 
climax in 1866, when the statement of the 
United States treasurer showed a public 
debt of $2,773,236,174. By 1893 this 
debt had been reduced a half. The Span- 
ish-American War, the erection of public 
buildings in many cities, the enlarging of 
the pension list, the extension of rural free 
delivery and the building of the Panama 
canal, have brought the debt to a point 
over two billion again. Of this amount 
$925,011,637 is a bonded indebtedness 
bearing interest. At the close of the Civil 
War our national debt amounted to $79.44 
per person. In 1913 the net total of the 
National indebtedness above cash on hand, 
amounted to only $11.10 per capita. 

The following table gives an idea of the 
various national debts, based on reports, 
dated 1905-1909: 

National 

Countries. Debt. 


Argentina . 

Australasia : 

Australia, States. 

New Zealand . 

Austria-Hungary . 

Austria . 

Hungary . .. 

Rplcrinm . 

.$444,440,067 

. 1,128,632,767 

. 306,059,246 

. 1,092,863,255 

. 818,096,120 

. 1,102,742,776 

. 621,640,286 

Rnlivia . 

. 2,977,924 

Brazil . 

Bnlrrnria . 

. 542,213,359 

. 73,452,805 

Cnnndn . 

. 253,997,742 

Central America: 

Costa Rica . 

Crii a fpm nl n . 

. 20,962,242 

. 14,148,366 

Honduras . 

. 104,335,589 

Ndraracnia . 

. 6,330,739 

Salvador . 

ile . 

. 4,602,361 

. 95,720,654 

China . 

Colombia . 

Cuba . 

. 597,192,000 

. 19,541,567 

. 47,695,350 


/ 






















DECALOGUE—DECATUR 


Denmark . 

Ecuador . 

Egypt . 

France . 

Algeria . 

Tunis . 

German Empire .. . 

States . 

Greece . 

Hayti . 

India (British) ... 

Italy . 

Japan . 

Luxemburg . 

Mexico . 

Netherlands . 

Norway . 

Paraguay . 

Persia . 

Peru ... 

Portugal . 

Roumania . 

Russia . 

Finland . 

Santo Domingo . . . 

Servia . 

Siam . 

Spain . 

Sweden . 

Switzerland . 

Turkey . 

United Kingdom . . 
British Colonies 

Uruguay . 

Venezuela . 


$64,231,713 

14,737,291 

468,314,391 

5,655,134,825 

6,323,838 

46,263,300 

855,963,454 

2,957,356,846 

167,052,145 

24,810,673 

1,127,923,363 

2,767,911,949 

932,445,798 

2,316,000 

222,058,181 

458,069,211 

91,764,945 

12,303,592 

16,737,500 

15,266,000 

864,701,627 

278,247,239 

4,038,199,722 

27,073,900 

30,236,731 

88,971,135 

4,866,500 

1,829,265,995 

102,059,388 

19,787,648 

458,603,213 

3,839,620,745 

612,510,084 

125,585,243 

45,160,402 


Total .$36,548,455,489 

Decalogue, dek'a-log, the ten command¬ 
ments, found in the twentieth chapter of 
the book of Exodus, and in the fifth chap¬ 
ter of Deuteronomy. These command¬ 
ments were given to Moses during the first 
of the forty years spent by the Israelites in 
the wilderness after they had been led out 
of Egypt. The nineteenth chapter of 
Exodus tells how Moses in accordance with 
the command of God called the people 
forth out of the camp “to meet with God,” 
how they stood below Mount Sinai while 
Moses went up to the top of the mountain 
and received the commandments directly 
from God. In Deuteronomy Moses tells 
the people that God wrote these commands 
on two tables of stone and delivered them 
unto him. The Jews call the command¬ 
ments the “ten words” which is the literal 
meaning of the Greek word decalogue. 
The precepts are somewhat differently di¬ 
vided in different churches. The Roman 
Catholics and Lutherans regard Exodus 


xx: 3-6 as one commandment and divide 
the seventeenth verse into two command* 
ments, while all the protestant churches ex¬ 
cept the Lutheran consider the third verse 
as one commandment, the fourth, fifth and 
sixth as another, and do not divide the 
seventeenth verse but regard it as one com¬ 
mandment, the tenth. 

Decameron, The. See Boccaccio. 

De Candolle, deh kon-dol', Augustin 
Pyrame (1778-1841), a noted French 
botanist. He was born at Geneva and edu¬ 
cated first for the law, then for medicine. 
It is noticeable that the botanists of the 
eighteenth century approached their favor¬ 
ite science by way of medicine. De Can¬ 
dolle was wont to excuse himself for leav¬ 
ing medicine by saying, “If I make a 
mistake in naming a plant, I can set it 
right.” Influential friends wondered that 
a man of his talents should spend his time 
running about France gathering plants. 
After holding various positions De Can¬ 
dolle settled down in a professorship at 
Geneva, where he accumulated a large her¬ 
barium and wrote several botanical trea¬ 
tises. He named many plants new to 
science. De Candolle was a close reader 
of Linnaeus’ works, but adopted the clas¬ 
sification of Ray and Jussieu. See Lin¬ 
naeus. 

Decatur, Stephen (1779-1820), an 
American naval officer. He was of French 
descent and was born at Sinnepuxent, 
Maryland. His father, also Stephen 
Decatur, had won distinction in the navy 
during the Revolution by capturing Eng¬ 
lish vessels. In 1798 at the commencement 
of his hostilities with France he was placed 
in charge of the Delaware and with this 
vessel captured two French privateers. 
That same year the young Stephen, then 
nineteen years of age, entered the navy as 
midshipman. The next year he was made 
lieutenant. This was at the time, it will be 
remembered, of the Tripoli War, a result 
of the pillaging and confiscating by the 
Barbary pirates. Decatur served in this 
war, and was at various times in command 
of several different vessels. In 1804, while 
in charge of the Intrepid, he entered the 
harbor of Tripoli, captured and burned the 
Philadelphia, which had been taken prison- 







































DECATUR—DECLARATION 


er by the Tripolitans, and made his escape 
under the terrific fire of 141 guns. This 
deed was pronounced by Lord Nelson “the 
most daring act of the age.” Decatur was 
at once promoted to the rank of captain, 
the highest regular rank in the United 
States navy. A few years later he was 
given the title of commodore by courtesy, 
as were all captains in the navy who had 
commanded a squadron. The regular office 
and title of “commodore” existed in the 
United States navy from 1862 to 1900 only. 
Decatur took part in several later attacks 
on Tripoli. In the War of 1812, in com¬ 
mand of the frigate United States he cap¬ 
tured the British frigate Macedonian, but 
two years later was obliged, after a gallant 
resistance, to surrender to four British 
ships. In 1815 Decatur was put in charge of 
a squadron sent to operate against Algiers 
and the Algerine pirates. He was success¬ 
ful in the undertaking, forcing the Dey of 
Algiers to declare the American Flag in¬ 
violate. He then brought Tunis and 
Tripoli to terms, obtaining satisfaction for 
their offenses in breaking the terms of their 
treaties. In 1816 Decatur was made naval 
commissioner. He was shot in a duel by 
Commodore James Barron. 

Decatur, a manufacturing city of Illi¬ 
nois. It is situated on the Sangamon River, 
thirty-eight miles east of Springfield. It is 
important on account of its industrial in¬ 
terests, and as a distributing center for 
coal, live-stock, grain and other argicultur- 
al products. The city is served by the 
McKinley Electric system and by the Wa¬ 
bash, the Illinois Central, the Vandalia, and 
other steam railroads. There are foundries, 
railroad shops, bridge works, the largest 
corn mills in the United States, and manu¬ 
factories of flour, farming tools, furniture, 
carriages, caskets, mantles, and engines. 
The city has an excellent public school sys¬ 
tem, about twenty-five church edifices, a 
hospital, three national banks, and a pub¬ 
lic library. The James Millikin Univer¬ 
sity and a Roman Catholic convent and 
academy are located there. The population 
of Decatur in 1910 was 31,140. 

Deccan, the peninsular portion of India 
lying between the Bay of Bengal on the 
east and the Arabian Sea on the west. 


The word is Hindu, meaning the south, 
i. e., the southern part of Hindustan. 

December, the twelfth month of the 
year. In the Roman year, which began 
with March, December was the tenth 
month; whence the name. December 22d is 
the winter solstice—the period of shortest 
day in the northern hemisphere and of 
longest day in the southern. December 
25th is the great holiday of the Christian 
world. Among the Romans the month was 
supposed to be under the special care of 
Vesta, the goddess of the hearth. The 
idea is a pretty one, symbolical of a season 
when the warm fireside and a bright flame 
are particularly acceptable. See Christ¬ 
mas ; Calendar. 

Decemvirs, de-sem'vers, in Roman his¬ 
tory, ten men appointed to systematize or 
codify the laws of the city. About 302 B. C. 
they presented their report. It was en¬ 
graved on tablets of bronze erected in the 
Roman forum that all might read. A year 
later two additional tablets were added. 
The laws thus published are known as the 
Twelve Tables. School boys learned them 
by heart. The significance of the work of 
the decemvirs lies in the fact that their 
appointment and the publicity of the code 
were demanded by the common people, 
that all might know what the laws were, 
and be secure from prosecution under lit¬ 
tle known or forgotten enactments. Writ¬ 
ten laws are a safeguard against tyranny. 
See Code; Sibyls. 

Declaration of Independence, a fa¬ 
mous act of the Continental Congress. June 
10, 1776, a committee of five, consisting of 
Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin 
Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. 
Livingston, was appointed to draw up the 
Declaration. The chairman framed the re¬ 
port. A few clauses in the charges against 
the king were canceled by the Congress, 
but the Declaration as it stands today is 
substantially the work of Thomas Jefferson. 
It was reported June 28th. It was adopted 
July 4th amid the ringing of bells and 
general jubilee. Copies were sent out 
broadcast over the signature of the presi¬ 
dent and secretary. July 19th Congress 
ordered the Declaration engrossed on 
parchment, that the historic document 


DECORATION DAY—DEER 


might be signed by the members. August 
2d it was signed by fifty-three mem¬ 
bers, then present. Absentees and others 
signed later. The last signature was affixed 
November 4th. In 1823 a copperplate 
facsimile was made under orders of Presi¬ 
dent J. Q. Adams. In the process, the 
artist faded the original text and the signa¬ 
tures until portions are illegible. Up to 
this date the Declaration was shown freely 
and on special occasions thereafter, but in 
1823 it was sealed up in a steel case secure 
from light and decay. It rests in the keep¬ 
ing of the secretary of state at Washington. 
It is said that, of all the fifty-six signers, 
not one died with a tarnished reputation. 
The last survivor, Charles Carroll of Car¬ 
rollton, Maryland, passed away in 1832. 

Decoration Day, or Memorial Day, 
a day set apart for the decoration of the 
graves of soldiers who fell in the Civil 
War, and for the holding of commemora¬ 
tive exercises. This observance originated 
in the Southern States. It was copied in the 
North. In 1868 General John A. Logan, 
then commander-in-chief of the Grand 
Army of the Republic, issued a. general 
order setting aside the 30th of May for the 
purpose of strewing flowers on the graves of 
old soldiers and for such exercises as local 
posts may direct. In many of the states 
that date is made a legal holiday. Owing 
to the earlier appearance of flowers in the 
South, April 26th is set apart as Confeder¬ 
ate Memorial Day by Alabama, Florida, 
Georgia, and Mississippi, and May 10th by 
North and South Carolina. It is now cus¬ 
tomary, both North and South, to decorate 
the graves of soldiers regardless of the 
side on which they fought. Credit for this 
beautiful' courtesy belongs to the women of 
the South. See Holidays. 

Deduction. See Thinking. 

Deed, in law an instrument in the na¬ 
ture of a contract usually employed in the 
conveyance of real estate. The word is 
Anglo-Saxon, and means that which is done 
beyond recall. Deeds for real estate, be¬ 
cause of the permanence of the transaction, 
require greater form and solemnity than 
other contracts and are usually drawn with 
great care, and made a matter of public 
record. 


The following are the principal requi¬ 
sites for a deed throughout the United 
States. It must be on paper or parchment 
and completely written before delivery. It 
must be between competent parties, upon 
neither of whom shall there be any re¬ 
straint. It must relate to suitable property 
and the consideration must be good and 
valuable. It must be signed, sealed, and de¬ 
livered and the obligee must accept it 
before it becomes binding. 

It were well to distinguish between the 
two common kinds of deeds, warranty and 
quit claim. The former is one in which 
the grantor warrants the title, and agrees 
to make it good if any flaw is found; while 
in the latter, only such title as the owner 
has is transferred. 

A deed is said to be in escrow when it 
is delivered to a third person to be held 
until after some specified event before de¬ 
livery to the grantee. For greater security 
deeds are usually recorded by a public 
officer called a recorder or register of deeds. 
Such public record serves as prima facie 
evidence of the ownership of property and 
a deed so recorded would hold over another 
given for the same property not so recorded. 

Deer, a family of cloven-hoofed, cud- 
chewing animals, including the elk, moose, 
caribou, and reindeer. There are numerous 
species found in both hemispheres, but, gen¬ 
erally speaking, the deer corresponds in the 
north temperate zone to the antelope of 
southern Africa. The male of the deer 
kind is known as a stag, or a buck; the fe¬ 
male as a hind, or a doe; the young, which 
are usually spotted, are called -fawns. 

The stag is provided with antlers. The 
antlers are bony outgrowths from the fore¬ 
head. The first appearance of the antler 
is a blood-red swelling, which elongates 
rapidly until it has taken the shape of an 
antler. It is at first covered with a soft 
skin, when it is said to be in the velvet; 
after the bony material has set the velvet 
dries and rubs off. A stag sheds his antlers 
and grows new ones every year. His age 
may be known, within certain limits, by the 
number of branches. The antler of a stag 
a year old has but one prong; that of a 
two-year-old, two prongs. A royal stag 
is one with twelve-tined antlers. 



Virginia cfeer. 



Muntjac of Java. 


Fallow deer. 





Stag with doe and fawn. 


Roe (in background). 


DEER. 


I 








































DEER 


The common red deer of Europe is 
celebrated in literature and in history, but 
has long since been exterminated, except 
where protected. Many fine herds are kept 
in the parks of England, as at Greenwich 
and elsewhere. Large deer preserves have 
been established, in the Highlands of 
Scotland. Extensive tracts of rough coun¬ 
try, of comparatively little value for agri¬ 
cultural purposes, in some instances com¬ 
prising 50,000 to 70,000 acres, have been 
set aside for hunting purposes under the 
jealous care of gamekeepers. Many of 
these estates are let for an annual rental 
to those who can afford expensive sport. 
It is nothing for a wealthy member of 
Parliament or tradesman to pay from 
$5,000 to $20,000 annual rental for a 
Highland deer preserve with its hunting 
lodge and facilities for entertaining com¬ 
pany. A million dollars or so are paid 
annually for the use of these preserves. 
Stags only may be taken. They cost these 
wealthy Nimrods about $250 apiece. There 
are several species in the wooded districts 
of South America and India. 

There are three prominent game deer 
in the United States and Canada. The 
mule deer is the characteristic deer of the 
Rocky Mountain region. It is the largest 
and most stately of our deer. Large speci¬ 
mens attain a shoulder height of forty-two 
inches. The antlers attain a spread of 
twenty-nine inches. The coat is steel gray 
in winter, to match the gray rocks. The 
summer coat is of a grayish brown. The 
flag or tail, when lifted, shows white with 
a black tip. The mule deer lives in the 
Bad Lands and foothills and ravines of the 
• Rocky Mountains, ascending plateaus 12,- 
000 feet above the sea. It is capable of 
living on scanty vegetation. Even sage¬ 
brush does not come amiss. A small variety 
is found in Alaska. The mule deer is ap¬ 
proaching extinction rapidly, as are so 
many of our larger mammals. 

The Columbia black tail is a deer of the 
Pacific coast. Its flag is black, with a white 
fringe at the tip. It lives in the dense 
coniferous forests that extend from British 
Columbia to California. It feeds on ever¬ 
green foliage. Park specimens taken to the 
East die of stomach troubles. 


The deer of North American literature 
is the white tail or red Virginia deer. At 
present it reaches its greatest size and per¬ 
fection in the evergreen country reaching 
from Minnesota to the Adirondacks. A 
large specimen stands thirty-six inches high. 
A small variety is called the Florida white 
tail. A western, somewhat dwarfed species 
is known as the Arizona white tail. This 
deer has the faculty of skulking in the sum¬ 
mer time, and of rearing its young in brush 
near human habitations, without being dis¬ 
covered. It is still to be found in every 
state and territory of the Union, it is said, 
save Delaware, Oregon, Nevada, Califor¬ 
nia, and Arizona. Its general color is 
chestnut red, turning grayish in winter; 
with a tail, white beneath, which, as hunt¬ 
ers say, is thrown up like a flag when the 
deer leaps. 

In eastern North America the deer was a 
factor in aboriginal life not unlike that of 
the camel among the Arabs, or the buffalo 
among the Indians of the plains. Its meat, 
called venison, was a staple article of diet. 
When cut into strips and dried or jerked 
in the sun, it could be kept for a consider¬ 
able length of time. The hide was used for 
moccasins and clothing. The sinews, fine¬ 
ly divided, were used for thread; deer’s hair 
served for stockings, and untanned pelts, 
or pelts tanned with the hair on, were used 
for tents and for blankets in which to sleep. 
The white settlers who drove the Indians 
from their hunting grounds were scarcely 
less indebted to the deer for food and cloth¬ 
ing.' The buckskin hunting shirt and leg¬ 
gings are as much a part of the traditional 
hunter and guide as his coonskin cap. 
Cooper’s Leather stocking Tales take their 
name from the deerskin leggings worn by 
Natty Bumpus. Col. Boone and his Ken¬ 
tucky rangers were clad in buckskin hunt¬ 
ing shirts. 

At present deer are protected by law in 
the states and provinces where they are 
still found; but actual settlers, and those 
who supply meat to lumber camps, regard 
the laws as designed for the particular 
benefit of city hunters, and pay very little 
attention to them. The deer is very adroit 
in hiding itself in thickets, and brings up 
its young surprisingly, under difficult cir- 


DEER-MOUSE—DEGREE 


cumstances; but settlements, dogs, and 
guns are exterminating it rapidly. Warner’s 
A-Hunting of the Deer is a sympathetic 
piece of writing. William J. Long has 
written entertainingly of the deer in his 
Secrets of the Woods. 

See Antelope; Goat. 

Deer-Mouse, a handsome, delicate wild 
mouse. It is also called the white-footed 
mouse. It has rounded ears, wide, innocent 
eyes, fawn-colored sides, a daintily marked 
back, and white under parts. It is about 
seven inches long, half tail. It moves 
about at night and is active all winter. In 
the summer time, it collects nuts and seeds, 
stowing them away in hollow trees, and 
under stones and logs, or in pockets in the 
turf. A pair of small pouches, chipmunk¬ 
like, are used to carry supplies. The deer- 
mouse is fond of honey. When pursued 
the deer-mouse endeavors to escape by long 
jumps, not equal, of course, to those of the 
jumping mouse. While apt to be a nuisance 
in camp from a habit of pilfering food, 
the deer-mouse is a companionable little fel¬ 
low, quite free from the vicious habits of 
the European house mouse. See Mouse. 

Deere, John. See Plow. 

Deerslayer, The. See Cooper ; 
Leatherstocking. 

De Foe, Daniel (1661-1731), the au¬ 
thor of Robinson Crusoe. His father was 
a London butcher. Daniel’s personal his¬ 
tory is a series of ups and downs—chiefly 
downs. He studied for the Presbyterian 
ministry, but joined in Monmouth’s rebel¬ 
lion and narrowly escaped having his head 
cut off. He set himself up in trade, selling 
hose, but failed in business. He held an 
appointment under the government collect¬ 
ing a tax on windows, but was thrown out 
by the repeal of the law. He then lost all 
he had in the tile business. He wrote a 
pamphlet against the High Church party. 
He was arrested, set in the pillory, had his 
ears cut off, and was imprisoned for two 
years. In all he wrote about 254 books 
and pamphlets. He died of apoplexy at the 
age of seventy, needy, in debt, immortal. 

Robinson Crusoe, the most popular of 
boy’s books, was written when De Foe was 
sixty years old. It is founded on the ac¬ 
tual adventures of a Scotchman named 


Alexander Selkirk, who spent several years 
alone on Juan Fernandez Island in the 
Pacific, west of Chile. The incidents are 
drawn up out of the writer’s own imagina¬ 
tion. This boy’s story is considered the 
beginning of stories and novels of ad¬ 
venture. It has been translated into the 
principal languages of the globe, and has 
been read with pleasure by more boys than 
any other book ever penned. “Nobody,” 
said Dr. Johnson, “ever laid it down with¬ 
out wishing it longer.” In his treatise on 
educational theory Rousseau says, “My 
Emile shall read this book (meaning Rob¬ 
inson Crusoe ) before any other; it shall 
for a long time be his entire library, and 
shall always hold an honorable place. It 
shall be the text, on which all our discus¬ 
sions of natural science shall be only com¬ 
mentaries.” 

The success of this book encouraged De 
Foe to write several more—among others, 
The Journal of the Great Plague in Lon¬ 
don. It is an interesting book. It pretends 
to be written by an eye witness, though the 
plague had passed ere De Foe was six years 
old. It is written in so vivid a style, as by 
a shopkeeper, that it has been supposed by 
many to be a history of that event. 

Some idea of De Foe’s personal appear¬ 
ance may be had from the description offer¬ 
ing a reward of $250 for his arrest: “A 
middle-sized, spare man, about forty years 
old, of a brown complexion, and dark- 
brown colored hair, but wears a wig; a 
hooked nose, a sharp chin, gray eyes, and 
a large mole near his mouth.” 

See Selkirk. 

Degree, a term used in the title given to 
a student completing a course of study in a 
college or university to denote the rank he 
has attained. In the United Sta.es a 
diploma is given usually in evidence of the 
degree which has been conferred. The 
three degrees granted are those of bachelor, 
master and doctor. The degree of bachelor 
of arts, or bachelor of science, or bachelor 
of literature, indicates usually that the re¬ 
cipient has completed a four years’ course 
in the department mentioned, as prescribed 
in the college curriculum. The degree of 
master is given after one additional year 
of specialized study in a graduate depart- 


DE KALB—DELAND 


ment. For the doctor’s degree the appli¬ 
cant must have devoted either two or three 
years to specialized study, and must also 
prepare a thesis upon some subject ap¬ 
proved by the faculty. In the United 
States there is a lack of uniformity among 
various universities and colleges in the mat¬ 
ter of granting degrees. As a result the 
title of A. B., bachelor of arts, for instance, 
is of little significance unless the college 
conferring the degree is known and its cur¬ 
riculum and requirements clearly under¬ 
stood. Honorary degrees are those, usually 
doctor of divinity, or doctor of laws, 
conferred in general recognition of the 
recipient’s attainments in the world of let¬ 
ters, science, or philosophy. 

De Kalb, Johann (1721-1780), a Ger- 
man-American soldier, and general in the 
Revolution. He was a native of Bavaria, 
but entered the French service in 1743, at¬ 
taining the rank of brigadier-general. In 
1777 he accompanied Lafayette to America 
and was made major-general in the Ameri¬ 
can army. He joined the main army under 
Washington, serving later in New Jersey 
and in Maryland. In 1780 he was made 
second in command under General Gates, 
and lost his life in the battle of Camden. 

Dekker, or Decker, Thomas (1570- 
1637 or later), an English dramatist. Lit¬ 
tle is known of his life, except that he lived 
in London, wrote about twenty-eight dra¬ 
mas alone, and many others in collab¬ 
oration with Massinger, Ford, Webster, 
Rowley, Middleton, and others. He ex¬ 
celled in scenes laid in shops, inns, taverns, 
and the like. 

SAYINGS. 

Turn over a new leaf. 

Honest labor bears a lovely face. 

This principle is old, but true as fate,— 

Kings may love treason, but the traitor hate. 

De Koven, Henry Louis Reginald 

(1859-), an American composer. He was 
born at Middletown, Connecticut, but re¬ 
ceived his education in Europe where he 
was taken at the age of eleven. He was 
graduated from Oxford in 1879, then 
studied music in various European cities. 
His first opera, The Begum, was produced 
in 1887. Since then De Koven has de¬ 
voted his time to composing light opera and 


songs, many of which have become widely 
known. Among his operas may be mentioned 
The Mandarin, Maid Marion, The Fenc¬ 
ing Master, Don Quixote. Popular songs 
are 0 Promise Me, and The Armorer s 
Song. 

Delagoa Bay, an inlet on the south¬ 
eastern coast of Africa, discovered by the 
Portuguese in 1498. It is the terminus of 
a railway connecting the Transvaal with 
the seacoast. 

Delaine, de-lan', a plain-woven, light¬ 
weight, woolen dress fabric. The name is 
French, originally mousseline de laine, or 
muslin of wool, and indicates that the 
fabric, while made of woolen threads, is 
woven like muslin. It was very popular 
in Europe and America from 1840 to 1875. 
The fabric was dyed in plain colors, and 
printed or left plain. At the present time, 
challis, a similar material, but finer and - 
softer, has taken its place almost entirely. 

Deland, Mrs. Margaret Wade Camp¬ 
bell, an American novelist. She was born 
in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, in 1857. She 
was educated at the Cooper Union, New 
York, and for some time was a teacher of 
drawing. She was married in 1880 to L. 

F. Deland. Since her marriage she has 
resided in Boston. Her first novel, John 
Ward, Preacher, published in 1888, at¬ 
tracted wide notice. It is the story of a 
woman whose soul revolts against the ac¬ 
cepted religious beliefs which her husband 
preaches. Philip and His Wife deals with 
the divorce question. The Awakening of 
Helena Ritchie is a much later storv, and 
unquestionably the best of Mrs. Deland’s 
novels. Its vital question is that of the 
responsibility of one human life to all life, 
and it teaches that renunciation for the 
common good is repaid in spiritual growth 
and development. Mrs. Deland is best 
known by her short stories which have won 
her a place among the “representative story¬ 
tellers of America.” These, published orig¬ 
inally in the magazines, have been collected 
in two volumes, Old Chester Tales and Dr. 
Lavender’s People. They are stories of 
Pennsylvania village life. Most of them, 
like the novels, deal with some ethical 
problem. They display a fine discrimina¬ 
tion in the peculiarities of character, a clear 


DELAWARE 


beauty, and delicacy of touch, which has 
led to a comparison with the work of Jane 
Austen. Mrs. Deland, however, displays 
the greater depth of feeling and wider sym¬ 
pathy. She strikes at the root of spiritual 
growth or spiritual stagnation, as the case 
may be. Among her characters, Dr. Lav¬ 
ender and the irresistible David are genuine 
creations. 

Delaware, one of the original thirteen 
states. It lies on the west shore of Dela¬ 
ware Bay. Maryland, Pennsylvania, and 
New York are its neighbors. Area, 2,050 
square miles. It is intermediate in size be¬ 
tween Rhode Island and Connecticut. By 
the thirteenth census the population was re¬ 
ported at 202,322. The state consists of. 
three counties—Newcastle, Kent, and Sus¬ 
sex. The capital is Dover, situated near the 
central part of the state. Wilmington, the 
metropolis, is a manufacturing city. It has 
an excellent harbor. It has long been 
noted as a shipbuilding center. The first 
iron sailing vessel built in this country left 
the docks of Wilmington in 1854. The 
style of making printers’ paper in large 
rolls instead of sheets was introduced here 
in 1817. The greatest powder works in 
America, those of the Du Ponts, are loca¬ 
ted near Wilmington. Large canning 
works, flour mills, boiler factories, car 
shops, and tanneries are among the manu¬ 
facturing industries. Morocco leather is 
dressed in large quantities. 

The northern county is rough or rolling. 
Granite, kaolin, suitable for porcelain, and 
brick and terra cotta clays are among the 
most prominent mineral productions. The 
shipbuilding industry has about exhausted 
the white oak of the region. Valuable cy¬ 
press is still found around the edges of the 
swamps, in which wild fowls abound. 

Delaware is the most decidedly agricul¬ 
tural state in the Union. The three coun¬ 
ties represent roughly quite distinct physical 
regions. The farther south, the more level 
the surface and the sandier the soil. 
Eighty per cent of the entire state is in¬ 
cluded in farms. Sixty per cent is under 
actual cultivation, a greater proportion 
than in any other state of the Union. 
Grain raising and general farming are car¬ 
ried on to some extent in Newcastle Coun¬ 


ty, but the greater part of the state is de¬ 
voted to gardening and raising of fruit for 
the markets of Baltimore, Philadelphia, 
and New York. In some years as many as 
4,000,000 baskets of peaches are marketed, 
with other orchard fruits, as pears, apples, 
and plums in proportion. Immense quan¬ 
tities of blackberries, raspberries, and 
strawberries are raised. Tomatoes and 
sweet corn are put up by the million cans. 
The dairy interests of the state are also 
important. 

The first settlement in Delaware was 
made by the Dutch in 1631. In 1638 the 
Swedes colonized this region, the only at¬ 
tempt made by them to gain a footing in 
the New World. An old Swede church 
built in 1698 still stands in Wilmington. 
In 1655 Governor Stuyvesant of New Am¬ 
sterdam, now New York, required the 
Swedes to submit to Dutch control. In 
1682 the colony passed with New Amster¬ 
dam under English rule. In 1683, in order 
to control the Delaware River, William 
Penn bought the colony. It was a part of 
Pennsylvania until the time of the Revolu¬ 
tionary War. Delaware was the first state 
to ratify the national Constitution. At the 
outbreak of the Civil War it was a slave¬ 
holding state, but, being under Northern 
rather than Southern influence, did not se¬ 
cede. The state is represented in Congress 
by one representative and, of course, two 
senators. The name is derived from that 
of the river and bay, which were named 
for Lord de la Warr. 

Statistics. The following statistics are 
the latest to be had from trustworthy 


sources: 

Land area, square miles . 1,960 

Population . 202,322 

Wilmington . 87,411 

Dover . 3,720 

No. counties . 3 

Members of state senate . 17 

Representatives . 35 

Salary of governor . $4,000 

U. S. representatives . 1 

Presidential electors . 3 

Assessed valuation of property .$76,000,000 

Bonded indebtedness . $816,785 

Acres under plow . 754,010 

Agricultural Products— 

Corn, bushels . 5,000,000 

Wheat, bushels. 1,800,000 

Oats, bushels . 131,000 

Barley, bushels . 40 



















DELECTABLE—DE LONG 


Tobacco, pounds . 2,000 

Fruits, sales . $961,000 

Butter, pounds. 2,000,000 

Eggs, dozen . 35,000,000 

Domestic Animals— 

Horses . 35,000 

Mules . 5,000 

Cattle . 55,000 

Sheep . 12,000 

Swine . 46,000 

Goats . 143 

Peach trees . 2,500,000 

Tomatoes, acres . 16,000 

Miles of railway . 336 

Manufacturing establishments . 1,417 

Capital invested . .$50,000,000 

Operatives. 20,567 

Wages . $9,000,000 

Raw material .$24,000,000 

Output of manufactured goods.$41,000,000 

Output of leather .$10,000,000 

Lumber products . $250,000 

Output of minerals . $431,000 

Teachers in public schools . 973 

Pupils enrolled . 41,270 

Percentage of male teachers. 17.4 

Average monthly salary of men teach¬ 
ers . $72.82 

Average monthly salary of wom^n 

teachers . $34.70 

Average annual expenditure per pupil $19.91 


Delectable Mountains, The, in Bun- 

yan’s Pilgrim's Progress, a chain of moun¬ 
tains within sight of the Celestial City. 
The mountains were covered with “gardens 
and orchards, vineyards and fountains of 
water.” Christian and Hopeful were wel¬ 
comed and refreshed by the shepherds who 
fed their flocks there. From these moun¬ 
tains, too, the Pilgrims obtained their first 
faint glimpses of the gates of the City and 
“some of the glory of the place.” See 
Bunyan. 

De Lesseps. See Lesseps. 

Delft, a city of Holland. It is situated 
on a level plain eight miles northwest of 
Rotterdam. It is intersected by canals 
crossed by half a hundred bridges. Pres¬ 
ent population, 44,000. Delft was once a 
fortified city, the seat of the Orange family, 
whose burial place is here. It is noted as 
the place of the manufacture of Delft pot¬ 
tery during the fourteenth century. The 
ware was made of a clay found here. It 
was ground, mixed, and allowed to ripen. 
It was then moulded on the potter’s wheel 
and partially burned. An enamel made of 
sea kelp, sand, lead, and tin, with cobalt for 
blue, was brought to the consistency of 


thick paste and then applied. The delicate 
ware was then inclosed in coarse pottery 
to protect it from smoke, and was kiln- 
burned. Old Dutch ware of the Delft sort 
is prized highly by collectors. See Pot¬ 
tery. 

Delhi, the ancient capital of Hindustan. 
It is very nearly equidistant from Bombay 
and Calcutta, to both of which railways 
have been built. In the time of the Great 
Mogul, Jehan, it had a population of 2,000,- 
000. He built the palace of the Great 
Mogul, the most magnificent and interesting 
structure of the kind in India. It rivals 
the kremlin of Moscow. A mosque of white 
marble and red sandstone was built by the 
same monarch. It cost half a million dol¬ 
lars. The modern city is surrounded by a 
wall thirty feet high, defended by towers 
and pierced by eleven gates. Delhi Col¬ 
lege, founded in 1792, and attended by 
several hundred students, maintains instruc¬ 
tion in the English, Persian, Arabic, and 
Sanskrit languages. Delhi, with its sur¬ 
rounding ruins of tombs and palaces, has 
played an important part in the history of 
India, and, at the last durbar, it was 
named as the capital of India instead of 
Calcutta. It is noted for several indus¬ 
tries, such as the weaving of cashmere 
shawls and the making of goldsmith’s 
work of wondrous delicacy and beauty, es¬ 
pecially gold embroidery. The people are 
half Hindu, half Mohammedan. Popula¬ 
tion, 208,000. See India. 

Delirium Tremens, de-lir'i-um tre'- 
menz, a wandering of the mind due to pro¬ 
longed intoxication. The victim of alco¬ 
holic beverages, opium, belladonna, cocaine, 
and other drugs is overtaken by an ungov¬ 
ernable trembling of the body, loss of ap¬ 
petite, and wakefulness, and is subject to 
illusions of the senses, such as seeing dart¬ 
ing, hissing serpents and hearing terrifying 
noises when there are none. Rest, quiet, 
sleep, and a restored appetite are depended 
on to effect a cure; but the victim is fre¬ 
quently but a quaking shadow of his for¬ 
mer self, will and energy quite gone. It is 
properly an alcoholic derangement of the 
nervous system. 

De Long, George Washington (1844- 
1881), an American explorer. He was 





























DELOS—DELPHI 


born at New York, August 22, 1844, and 
died in Siberia, October 30, 1881. He was 
a graduate of the United States Naval 
Academy, and had experience in Arctic 
navigation. In 1879 James Gordon Ben¬ 
nett, Jr., proprietor of the New York 
Herald, fitted out the Jeanette for a three 
years’ voyage of Arctic exploration. By 
permission of the government, De Long 
took command. He sailed from San Fran¬ 
cisco, passed through Bering Strait, and 
cruised along the north coast of Asia. The 
vessel was caught in an ice pack and 
crushed June 13, 1881. With fourteen 
companions De Long reached the delta of 
the Lena in Siberia. Two men were sent 
forward to obtain relief. The rest of the 
party perished of cold and starvation. 
Their bodies were discovered and interred 
by another party of the crew who had 
found shelter in a small village on the 
Lena. See Franklin; Nansen; Arctic 
Regions. 

Delos, de'los, a rocky island in the 
Grecian Archipelago, the smallest of the 
Cyclades. It is about two miles square. 
In the mythological account Delos was 
raised from the bottom of the ocean by 
Poseidon, and for some time was a floating 
island moving from place to place. Hera, 
the wife of Zeus, was jealous of Leto, one 
of Zeus’ favorites. The wrathful Hera 
bound Earth by oath to allow Leto no 
resting-place. Leto, known to the Romans 
as Latona, wandered over the world until 
at last she found this floating island, which, 
as it was not stationary, was not included in 
Earth’s promise. Here Leto gave birth to 
twin children, Apollo and Diana, and 
henceforth the island was sacred to Apollo. 
Zeus chained Delos to the bottom of the 
ocean that it might be a safe home for 

Leto. 

Historically, the Ionians were the first 
inhabitants of Delos. A yearly festival 
was held here in honor of Apollo. After 
the fall of Corinth Delos became an im¬ 
portant commercial center. It had an ex¬ 
cellent harbor and was in the direct route 
from southern Europe to Asia. It is said 
that 10,000 slaves changed hands in one day 
at this place. A beautiful temple, erected 
in honor of Apollo, stood on the island. It 


was built of Parian marble, and contained 
a famous statue of the god and an altar in 
the shape of a cube. Once, in time of pesti¬ 
lence, the people consulted an oracle and 
were told to “double the altar of Apollo.” 
Several ancient mathematicians attempted 
to solve the problem of doubling this cube. 
Hence the doubling of a cube is still called 
the Delian problem. Delos was devastated 
during the Mithridatic War, and never re¬ 
gained its former prosperous condition. 
The old town of Delos is only a mass of 
ruins, but remains of the temple may still 
be seen. The island has no permanent in¬ 
habitants. A few shepherds and goatherds 
from neighboring islands may be found 
there with their flocks during the summer 
season. 

See Doubling the Cube. 

Delphi, del'fl, a city of ancient Greece. 
It stood in a grand amphitheater at the 
southern base of Mt. Parnassus, sacred to 
the Muses. The springs of Castalia still 
break forth here, and find their way to the 
sea eight miles distant. The city was fa¬ 
mous as the seat of the Pythian games, the 
Delphic oracle, and the worship of Apollo. 
The various temples were adorned with 
innumerable statues. Nero carried away 
500 bronze objects of art. Pliny says there 
were 3,000 statues in Delphi in his day. 
As the temples were sacred the priests were 
entrusted with the care of treasure. None 
the less, the temples were plundered occa¬ 
sionally, as in time of war. The oracle 
was consulted in the following way. The 
priestess, at first a young woman, later a 
woman not under fifty, was bathed in water 
from the fount of Castalia and crowned 
with the laurel wreath sacred to Apollo. 
The Pythia, as she was called, was then 
conducted to a cave in the interior of the 
temple, and seated on a holy tripod or three- 
legged stool over a fissure in the rock, from 
which intoxicating vapors rose. Under the 
divine influence of Apollo the priestess be¬ 
came seized with a fit of prophecy. Amid 
her writhings and contortions and shudder- 
ings and groans, half articulate words es¬ 
caped. These the attendant priests, stimulat¬ 
ed by rich presents, took down with care, 
and framed into hexameter utterances. 
These verses were delivered to the anxious 


DELSARTE—DELTA 


inquirer as the message vouchsafed by Apol¬ 
lo in reply to his inquiry. Many celebrated 
responses are recorded. Croesus was told, 
“The war will destroy a great empire.’' 
He was left to find out later that the empire 
to be destroyed was his own, not that of 
Cyrus as he had supposed. Themistocles 
received a response to the effect that the 
safety of Athens lay in wooden walls. This 
he construed to be favorable to the build¬ 
ing of a navy, etc. Probably the thought¬ 
ful men of the day regarded the oracle 
as an imposture, but used it as a means of 
leading the people. 

Delsarte' System, a system of physical 
training, the primary purpose of which is 
dramatic expression. The system takes its 
name from Frangois Delsarte, a French¬ 
man, who was born at Solesme in 1811, 
and died at Paris in 1871. Delsarte was 
a student at the conservatory, expecting to 
become an opera singer, when he lost his 
voice, and in consequence turned his atten¬ 
tion to teaching the arts of musical and 
dramatic expression. He met with marked 
success and gradually elaborated the sys¬ 
tem he had originated. His aim was to 
make elocution a science, feeling that a 
system of formulated laws might have 
saved his own voice which he thought had 
been lost for lack of guidance. He taught 
that voice is the language of life; gesture, 
the language of the emotions; and articula¬ 
tion, the language of reason. In perfect 
dramatic expression all these languages 
must be brought into play. Every organ¬ 
ism must be so developed as to perform its 
part perfectly in the whole scheme of ex¬ 
pressing thought and feeling. 

The Delsarte system commences with 
gymnastics of an aesthetic character. One 
is taught to relax utterly, in other words, to 
withdraw will-power from various parts 
of the body, first from the fingers and then 
from the hands, arms, feet, legs, waist, 
hips, spine, head, jaw, eyelids. The har¬ 
monic poise of bearing and the significance 
of bodily pose are subjects that receive at¬ 
tention, while specific study is made of 
expression by means of the hand, the arm, 
the eye, the lips, and the head. On the 
principle that “gesture precedes speech” 
much attention is given to expression in 


pantomime. The Delsarte system was in¬ 
troduced in this country shortly after the 
death of its originator. It has found many 
advocates who claim that it is of special 
value not only to those preparing for the 
stage, but also to all who would develop 
nerve control. 

Delta, a triangular tract of new land at 
the mouth of a river, so called from its 
usual resemblance to the letter d or delta 
of the Greek alphabet. A river brings 
down a large quantity of fine soil or silt, 
which is deposited in quiet water at its 
mouth, and builds up a fan-shaped plain. 
The Rhone is building a delta in the upper 
end of Lake Geneva and one at its mouth, 
where it empties into the Mediterranean. 
The city of Arles, once near the mouth, is 
now thirty miles inland. The Po has built 
up a plain fourteen miles beyond the old 
seaport of Adria which gave its name to the 
Adriatic Sea. Its delta advances at the rate 
of fifty feet a year. The Nile carries 
17,000,000 tons of silt into the Mediter¬ 
ranean annually. Its delta is already ninety 
miles out at sea, and has an outside border 
of 180 miles. The delta of the Ganges 
and its sister stream now has an area of 
60,000 square miles, and extends seaward 
over 200 miles beyond the old continental 
seacoast. The Danube carries down 20,- 
000,000 tons of silt a year; the Rhine a 
fourth as much. The Thames is short, and 
carries but 613,000 tons a year. The Hud¬ 
son, flowing through a rocky country in 
part, carries but two-thirds as much silt as 
the Thames. The Mississippi carries 112,- 
832,171 tons of silt a year. Its delta, on 
which New Orleans is built, has an area of 
12,000 square miles. It is already two hun¬ 
dred miles in length, and is advancing into 
the Gulf at the rate of a mile in sixteen 
years. The depth of the alluvial soil at 
New Orleans is estimated to be not less 
than 700 to 1,000 feet. Deltas not infre¬ 
quently fill up lakes and cause them to dis¬ 
appear, but quite as often a branch stream 
builds up a delta in a main channel and 
dams the water back, thus creating a lake. 
This is true in the case of Lake Pepin, 
whose waters are held back by a delta in 
the upper Mississippi formed at the mouth 
of the Chippewa, a Wisconsin branch of 


DELUGE—DEMIDOFF 


the Father of Waters. The soil of a delta 
is considered extraordinarily fertile. See 
River; Jetty. 

Deluge, the great flood that prevailed in 
the days of Noah. The wickedness of 
man; the piety of Noah; the building of 
the ark; the breaking up of the fountains 
of the deep, and the opening of the windows 
of heaven; the rain of forty days and forty 
nights; the preservation of beast and fowl 
and creeping thing; the prevalence of water 
on the face of the earth; the resting of the 
ark on Mount Ararat; and the sending 
forth of the raven and the dove, are told 
in chapters vi, vii, and viii of Genesis. 
A former opinion, that the deluge of Noah 
was universal, has given way to the view 
that it was local. Similar traditions are 
preserved by many peoples. The most 
notable is that of the Chaldeans, a people 
akin to the Hebrews. It was found in¬ 
scribed in cuneiform characters on clay 
tablets, and was made known in 1872. The 
Chaldean deluge reached its height in seven 
days. The ark rested on a mountain in 
eastern Kurdistan; the Noah-like hero of 
the Chaldean flood sent forth a raven, a 
swallow, and a dove. 

Demeter, de-me'ter, in Greek my¬ 
thology, one of the principal twelve deities. 
Demeter was the goddess of seed and har¬ 
vest—the symbol of the nourishing and 
fertilizing principle in nature. She was 
the daughter of Cronos and Rhea, and 
mother of Persephone. The Greeks con¬ 
sidered that good crops depended upon the 
payment of proper respect to this goddess. 
They annually offered bulls, cows, pigs, 
honey cakes, and fruits upon her altars. 

The myth of chief importance in the 
worship of Demeter related to Persephone. 
Zeus, Persephone’s father, promised her in 
marriage to Hades, god of the lower world. 
Enticing the maiden to wander away to 
gather flowers in the field of Enna, Sicily, 
Zeus caused the earth to open, thus giving 
Hades an opportunity to carry her away. 
Demeter heard her daughter’s cries, but 
had no suspicion of what had happened. 
She searched for Persephone through the 
whole earth. Finally Helios, the sun god, 
told Demeter that Hades had stolen her. 
The fountain Arethusa brought the sad 


mother news from her daughter. “While 
passing through the bowels of the earth,’’ 
she said, “I beheld your Persephone. She 
is sad, but she reigns as queen in Ere¬ 
bus.” Demeter vowed she would never re¬ 
turn to Olympus without her daughter. 
Moreover, she afflicted the whole earth, 
since it had opened to receive her child, 
with sterility. Zeus sought by every means 
he could devise to induce her to break her 
vow. At last, fearing lest the race of men 
should perish, Zeus sent Hermes to Erebus 
to bring Persephone back. Hades was in¬ 
duced to let his wife return to her mother; 
but the wily monarch gave her a pome¬ 
granate, which she ate. Plaving eaten of 
the fruit of Erebus, Persephone could 
never altogether leave the infernal regions, 
but was thenceforth compelled to spend 
there a part of each year. Demeter, con¬ 
tent with her daughter’s presence for two- 
thirds of the year, restored fertility to the 
earth. She taught Triptolemus, whose 
parents had pitied her sorrows, to use the 
plow and to sow seed. 

This story is symbolic of the growth of 
grain which must remain in the dark 
ground unseen for a time, as Persephone 
must remain in Erebus. Demeter was iden¬ 
tified by the Romans with their Ceres. 
Demeter is represented in ancient monu¬ 
ments as a beautiful woman of matronly 
appearance. Her face has a kindly ex¬ 
pression. She is standing in a chariot 
drawn by dragons, her head crowned with 
a garland of wheat. A torch is in one 
hand and a sheaf of wheat or poppies in 
the other. 

See Ceres ; Hades. 

Demidoff, a wealthy family of Russia. 
The founder of the family lived 1665-1720. 
He was the son of a serf. He established 
the first foundry in Siberia. Peter the 
Great employed him to cast his cannon, 
and gave him the working of mines that 
brought in wealth. His son continued the 
working of the copper, silver, and iron 
mines of the Urals;. and grandsons, fol¬ 
lowing the same industries of mining and 
casting, amassed colossal fortunes. Nicolai 
Demidoff, who died in 1828, had an in¬ 
come of $1,000,000 a year. The family is 
a worthy one; various members have been 


/ 


DEMIJOHN—DEMOCRITUS 


distinguished for philanthropy, progressive 
political ideas, scholarship, and taste for 
art. 

Demijohn, a battle or jug inclosed in 
wickerwork for safety in handling. The 
most satisfactory explanation of the origin 
of the term is that it is a corruption of 
Damagan, the name of a Persian town 
where glass demijohns were originally 
made for the safe carriage of precious es¬ 
sences and cordials in the caravan trade. 
The demijohn may be of glass or of earth¬ 
enware, and is made in sizes from a half 
pint to five gallons. The less the capacity 
the more precious the contents, and the 
finer the handiwork of the wicker covering. 
The term is associated in the public mind 
with ardent spirits, as a demijohn of 
whiskey; but in the trade, perfumery, es¬ 
sences, extracts, mercury, expensive drugs, 
and many other costly liquids, as well as 
liquors, etc., are imported or shipped in 
demijohns. In place of wicker protection, 
American shippers of acids and similar 
chemicals in bulk use the carboy, which 
consists of a large bottle packed in a wood¬ 
en box or case. See Bottle ; Glass. 

Democracy, a government by the peo¬ 
ple. It is not a primitive form of govern¬ 
ment. Savage tribes are governed usually 
by a chief, sheik, or other leader. The 
earliest approach to a pure democracy is 
the town meeting in which each has a voice 
in the adoption of regulations and the elec¬ 
tion of officers. Democracy is entirely op¬ 
posed to the idea of leading families, 
inherited dignities, and permanent office¬ 
holders. As communities grow larger and 
expand into commonwealths, it is impos¬ 
sible for all the voters to get together. 
Some one has said that a pure democracy 
must be able to gather within hearing of a 
single voice. When the number of voters 
becomes too large for such an assembly it 
is necessary to elect representatives to per¬ 
form the actual work of making laws. In 
the farming regions of the United States 
local matters are still managed in a demo¬ 
cratic way; but in city, state, and national 
affairs, business is transacted by representa¬ 
tives who are for their term of office out of 
reach of the people. Speaking of the 
United States, President Eliot of Harvard, 
says: 


After observing the facts of a full century, one 
may therefore say of the American democracy 
that it has contracted public debt with modera¬ 
tion, paid it with unexampled promptness, ac¬ 
quired as good a public credit as the world has 
ever known, made private property secure, and 
shown no tendency to attach riches or to sub¬ 
sidize poverty, or in either direction to violate the 
fundamental principle of democracy that all men 
are equal before the law. 


Democratic Party, one of the chief 

political parties in the United States. Its 
distinguishing doctrine is that of giving the 
central government as little power as pos¬ 
sible. Historically, it is opposed to a strong 
central government. The first cleavage into 
political parties was that of Federalists and 
Anti-Federalists, the former in favor of 
adopting the United States Constitution, 
the latter opposed to it on the ground that 
it gave the government dangerous power. 
Out of the various Anti-Federal elements, 
Thomas Jefferson formed the party which 
has continued to the present time. It was 
known at first as Republican, then as 
Democratic-Republican, and finally as 
Democratic, a name still retained. The 
Democratic party is strongest in the South. 
The following presidents have been elected 
by the Democratic Party: 


Thomas Jefferson, 
James Madison, 
James Monroe, 
Andrew Jackson, 
Martin Van Buren, 


James K. Polk, 
Franklin Pierce, 
James Buchanan, 
Grover Cleveland, 
Woodrow Wilson. 


If we except the administration of 
George Washington, who was elected by the 
whole people, we may say that the Demo¬ 
cratic administrations have extended over 
56 of the 112 years from the inauguration 
of John Adams in 1797 .to 1909, the end of 
the term for which Roosevelt was elected. 

See Republican. 

Democ'ritus (460-370 B. C.), a Greek 
philosopher, noteworthy as the founder of 
the ancient atomic philosophy. He was born 
at the Thracian colony of Abdera, notori¬ 
ous for the stupidity of its inhabitants. 
Little that is historical can be told of his 
life. The dates given for his birth show a 
disparity of thirty-four years. His father 
is mentioned under three different names. 
It is believed that Democritus traveled for 
several years, spending some time in Egypt. 
The story was current among the ancients 




DE MORGAN 


that he put out his own eyes that nothing 
might distract his attention from his medi¬ 
tations, which is but a figurative way of 
expressing the fact that he was a profound 
thinker. Of a few facts we are certain, 
that he acquired great learning, lived to be 
a very old man, and left at his death seven¬ 
ty-two works, the subjects of which in¬ 
cluded all branches studied in his day. His 
style was of such beauty that Cicero com¬ 
pared it with Plato’s. Of all these works 
only a few fragments remain, which is a 
matter for regret. 

According to the theory of Democritus, 
atoms are the ultimate material of all 
things, even of spirit. These atoms have 
existed from all times and are indestruct¬ 
ible. They vary in shape, are invisible, and 
are in constant motion. Since soul is of the 
same material as body, the two perish to¬ 
gether. Democritus was of course counted 
as a sceptic among the ancients. Tradition 
credits him with saying, “There is nothing 
true and if there is we do not know it.” 
Democritus, however, was of an optimistic 
habit. He taught that tranquillity of mind 
was the greatest good, and therefore all dis¬ 
turbing influences should be avoided. Liv¬ 
ing up to his principles he shunned all 
evils that he could and smiled at all the 
rest, winning thereby the nickname of “the 
laughing philosopher.” 

De Morgan, William (1840-), an 
English novelist. He has won his reputa¬ 
tion in a surprisingly short time. His 
American publishers tell us that he is “of 
an artistic and inventive turn of mind,” 
that he has invented a duplex bicycle, “the 
most effective sieve in existence,” and a fire 
grate which will consume its own smoke. He 
has been interested for years in ceramics; 
De Morgan tiles are considered especially 
artistic in England. William De Morgan 
is the son of Augustus De Morgan, a dis¬ 
tinguished mathematician, a professor in 
University College, London. The elder 
De Morgan is the author of several mathe¬ 
matical works and of A Budget of Para¬ 
doxes, of which Holmes says: “Few per¬ 
sons ever read it through. Few intelligent 
readers ever took it up and laid it down 
without taking a long draught of its singu¬ 
lar and interesting contents,” 

11-26 


William De Morgan began his first 
novel, Joseph Vance, an Illwritten Auto¬ 
biography, when sixty-four years of age. 
It was rejected by the publishers. Before 
making a second attempt to have the work 
printed, the author decided to have it type¬ 
written. The woman who had this work in 
charge told a publisher that her girls were 
“reading the manuscript and crying over 
it,” instead of copying it. It is hardly 
necessary to add that the story very soon 
appeared. Joseph Vance, as well as De 
Morgan’s other stories, is a revival of the 
long, slow, old-fashioned way of story tell¬ 
ing—the way of Dickens and Thackeray. 
To the reader of modern fiction, wearied 
with the strain of grasping the whole 
course of a human life, not to mention a 
philosophy of existence and a scheme of 
the universe in the reading of half a dozen 
pages, the story of Joseph Vance comes 
like “the shadow of a great rock in a 
weary land.” Knowing that a man lives 
who had time to write it, we begin to feel 
that we may have time to read it. 

Alice-for-Short, another novel by De 
Morgan, published in 1907, is somewhat 
more dramatic. It has been called “ a gen¬ 
ial ghost-and-murder story.” Like Joseph 
Vance, its most striking characteristic is 
the author’s love for what is human in his 
fellow beings. One critic says of it, “By 
every law of fiction, it should be a bore— 
as a matter of fact it is not.” De Mor¬ 
gan’s last and strongest story, Somehow 
Good, appeared in 1908. It is a story of 
the present, full of pathos and humor. It 
has more of plot than Joseph Vance , while 
lacking none of the human sympathy, the 
wholesomeness, and the wisdom of those 
earlier stories. All three of these stories 
have the peculiar effect of inspiring the 
reader with the fixed conviction that they 
recount actual occurrences and experiences 
of the writer. They are, of course, based 
on the author’s knowledge of human life 
and character, but the incidents and person¬ 
alities are almost wholly imaginary. 

In my personal opinion, Joseph Vance, this 
“ill-written autobiography,” is wise, witty, gentle, 
and of unflagging interest; but then I have been 
frightfully prejudiced in its favor—by reading 
it!—Mary Moss. 


DEMOSTHENES—DEMURRAGE 


How can any appeal be made to the principles 
governing the art of fiction, in the case of Joseph 
Vance, a book which abides by no rule, and yet 
remains, when all is said, a beautiful work of 
art? Only a pedant could drag in matters of 
form and the like, with reference to a work so 
interpenetrated with human tenderness that the 
laying of academically critical hands upon it 
must seem merely an act of obtuse impertinence. 
. . . Mr. De Morgan is a novelist worthy of the 
old school. He has written just such a book as 
his famous predecessors were wont to write, a 
book to turn around in—a long, absorbing, and 
ennobling story.—Royal Cortissoz in N. Y. Trib¬ 
une. 

Joseph Vance is the first great English novel 
of the twentieth century.—Lewis Melville. 

Demosthenes (385-322 B. C.), the 
greatest of Greek orators. He was a na¬ 
tive of Athens. From his parents he in¬ 
herited property and an ambition to dis¬ 
tinguish himself as a public speaker. He 
studied rhetoric under the ablest teachers 
of the day. The accounts that have reached 
us of his early education inform us that 
he suffered from an impediment in his 
speech. He was so determined, however, 
to fit himself for public speaking, that he 
practiced with pebbles in his mouth, and 
frequented exposed caves on the coast, 
where he tried to make himself heard above 
the noise of the waves. In order to form 
his style he is said to have rewritten the his¬ 
tory of Thucydides several times, much as 
Benjamin Franklin rewrote Addison’s es¬ 
says for the same purpose. Philip of Mac- 
edon, the shrewd father of Alexander the 
Great, endeavored to secure entrance for 
Macedonia into the councils of Greece. 
Demosthenes opposed Philip with all his 
power. His orations against Philip— 
Philippics, they are called—are regarded 
as the finest specimens of Greek oratory. 
He characterized Philip as a despot, against 
whom there was but one safeguard to a 
democracy; namely, distrust. He also de¬ 
livered a famous oration on the occasion 
of dedicating a funeral mound to the mem¬ 
ory of those who had fallen near Chaeronea. 
Another famous oration, that on the crown, 
was called forth by the acts of a political 
adversary whom he drove into exile. De¬ 
mosthenes is credited with pure motives and 
sincere patriotism in opposing the designs 
of Philip and Alexander. Finally, how¬ 
ever, the Macedonian influence became too 


powerful for him. He fled from Athens, 
and resided at Aegina. After the death 
of Alexander he returned to Athens, but 
was again exiled by Alexander’s successor, 
Antipater. According to general accounts 
he became weary of being hunted, and 
ended his life by taking poison. A com¬ 
plete edition of his works contains 123 
writings, including 61 orations. Some of 
these, however, are not considered genuine. 

Demurrage, in shipping, a charge made 
by a shipowner and paid by the owner of 
freight for delaying a ship in port beyond 
a reasonable time, usually specified in a con¬ 
tract. It is only fair that the carrier, 
who is paid by the ton, should not be de¬ 
layed by tardiness in loading or unloading, 
or by detention in port by authorities who 
deem it necessary to inspect a cargo or even 
to hold it in quarantine. The owner of 
the goods, however, cannot be required to 
pay for time lost on account of war, bad 
weather, breakage of machinery, or miscon¬ 
duct of an officer or of a crew. In the 
latter case, the owner of the goods has a 
just claim. 

In railroading, demurrage is a claim 
made upon the carrier, that is to say, the 
railroad company, for damages caused by 
improper delay or careless handling; as in 
case perishable fruit is delayed too long 
or glassware is broken in transit. A charge 
very similar to that made by a shipowner 
is made by railroads, usually for unneces¬ 
sary delay in loading and unloading cars. 
Some railroad systems allow two days for 
loading and two days for unloading. A 
nominal charge as say one dollar a day is 
made for detention beyond that time. This 
regulation is considered entirely fair. Were 
it not that some charge were made ship¬ 
pers might order cars and hold them for 
a long time before loading. Receivers of 
goods might let cars stand on the track, 
awaiting their tardy convenience. In this 
way other shippers would be deprived of 
cars needed for transportation. 

Modern legislatures have established the 
doctrine of reciprocal demurrage. Under 
laws recently enacted a railroad company 
is allowed a reasonable time to furnish 
the shipper a car. Further delay is penal¬ 
ized by a charge of so much per day. 


DENARIUS—DENMARK 


In 1909 rules were adopted at Washing¬ 
ton by the National Association of Railway 
Commissioners, composed of the federal 
and state railway commissions, an advi¬ 
sory body, having no existence under the 
law. After the adoption of the demurrage 
code by the association, the traffic mana¬ 
gers of the biggest railroads in the coun¬ 
try recommended its adoption. The new 
code provides briefly: 

(1) All private cars in railroad service are to 

be subject to demurrage rules. 

(2) Forty-eight hours free time will be allowed 

for loading or unloading all commodities, 
but one day extra will be allowed when 
cars are held for reconsignment, switching 
orders, or inspection. 

(3) Industries owning their own tracks and 

switching engines will not be allowed any 
extra time. 

(4) At the expiration of free time a charge of 

$1 a day or fraction will be exacted. 

(5) No railroad can refund demurrage charges 

unless weather conditions are such that 
the freight will be damaged by loading 
or unloading, or unless it is impossible 
for the shipper to get to the car. 

(6) Shippers can average their demurrage 

charges at the end of each calendar month 
by receiving credit for the cars they have 
loaded or unloaded before the expiration 
of the free time. 

See Railroad. 

Denarius, a silver coin of the Roman 
Republic and Empire. It was worth about 
sixteen cents of United States money. It 
is the silver penny of the New Testament. 
“Shew me a penny. Whose image and 
superscription hath it? They answered and 
said, Caesar’s.” Luke xx: 24. The abbre¬ 
viation d. for the English penny is derived 
from the Latin denarius. 

Denim, a heavy, twill-woven, cotton fab¬ 
ric used for workmen’s overalls, blouses, 
jumpers, and shirts, and for children’s 
rompers. It is dyed in plain colors and 
loom-figured in stripes or checks. A supe¬ 
rior grade, woven from cotton of a fine 
count, and frequently printed, is used for 
upholstery, draperies, sofa cushions, and a 
variety of household purposes. It is known 
as art denim. A fine, smoothly finished 
variety, is also used for women s skirts and 
children’s suits. See Twill. 

Denis, de-ne', or Dionysius, Saint, the 
patron saint of France. The life of this 
saint is a matter of tradition rather than 


history. According to the most trustworthy 
accounts he was sent to preach the gospel 
in France, then called Gaul, by the pope at 
Rome, about 250 A. D. He reached Paris 
after various difficulties and detentions and 
succeeded in winning many to Christ, be¬ 
coming the first Bishop of Paris. But the 
Roman governor of Gaul was disturbed by 

this success and ordered Denis with several 

/ 

companions to be brought before him. As 
they refused to give up their faith, they 
were tortured and at length suffered 
martyrdom, the date of which event is giv¬ 
en variously at 272 A. D. and 290 A. D. 
The bodies of the martyrs were thrown in¬ 
to the Seine, but recovered and given burial 
by a pious woman named Catulla. Later 
a chapel was built over their tomb, and 
there in the seventh century King Dagobert 
I founded the Abbey of St. Denis, which 
came to be the historic burial place of the 
kings of France. It is six miles north of 
Paris and about it has grown up a thriving 
manufacturing city known as St. Denis. 

Denmark, a kingdom of northwestern 
Europe. It lies between the Baltic and the 
North Sea. It consists of the peninsula 
of Jutland and. several large and many 
small islands. Of a total area of 15,360 
square miles, the islands constitute nearly 
forty per cent. The mainland is inter¬ 
sected by deep fiords, altogether giving 
Denmark a coast line comparable to that 
of Greece. Quite unlike Greece, however, 
the country of the Danes is low and level. 
Extensive tracts have been reclaimed from 
the sea by dykes, as in Holland. The 
characteristic rock formation is chalk. Ex¬ 
tensive sand dunes stretch along the western 
coast. The government is making energet¬ 
ic efforts to prevent them from creeping 
inward. Otherwise the country is fertile, 
producing rye, oats, barley and wheat, 
flax, hemp, tobacco, and orchard fruits. 

Although the shortest day is only six and 
one-half hours long, the climate is mild 
in winter and warm in summer, with an 
abundance of moisture. Green pastures are 
a feature of the countryside, and are a 
paradise for cattle, horses, and sheep. The 
summer is altogether too cool for Indian 
corn, but vegetables of all sorts grow to 
perfection. Combined with hay, they 


DENMARK 


make Denmark one of the finest stock coun¬ 
tries in the world. The Danish farms are 
small, owing to the custom of dividing 
the father’s farm among all the children. 
Cultivation is carried on with care. Poul¬ 
try raising is a source of wealth. See ar¬ 
ticle on Eggs. 

Danish butter shipped to the London 
market ranks with the best. Denmark sells 
London $20,000 worth of garden and dairy 
products daily. The farmers are a cheery, 
economical, thrifty, hospitable people. The 
women still spin and weave. The men 
make wooden shoes, wooden ladles, plat¬ 
ters, and furniture. Old people of good 
habits and character, if in need, are granted 
a state pension of from $2.25 to $4.50 a 
month. 

The eastern part of the country con¬ 
tains many royal, that is to say, public 
forests in which deer, hares, pheasants, and 
other game still find cover. The many 
inlets of the sea, winding reedy lagoons, 
as well as the inland waters, shelter im¬ 
mense numbers of wild waterfowl. 

In 1911 the population of Denmark was 
2,775,076. The people are almost entirely 
Danish, related closely to the inhabitants 
of Norway and Sweden. The government 
is a constitutional monarchy. King Fred¬ 
erick, son of Christian IX, the elder brother 
of Queen Alexandra of England and King 
Georgios of Greece, and also the father of 
the king of Norway, ascended the throne 
in 1906. He died in 1912, and was suc¬ 
ceeded by his son, Christian X. The body 
corresponding to our Congress is composed 
likewise of two houses with the expressive 
names of the Landsthing and the Folke- 
thing. The capital is Copenhagen. The 
national religion is Lutheran, with com¬ 
plete toleration for all. The flag of Den¬ 
mark is red with a white cross. It dates 
from the thirteenth century. It is said 
to be the oldest flag in Europe. 

A complete system of rural schools is 
supplemented by high schools, normal 
schools, and a university, the latter at the 
capital. There is little sheer illiteracy 
and comparatively little crime. 

Outside of beet sugar and liquors, the 
manufactures of the country are not large. 
Herring fisheries and oyster beds bring 
in a large sum annually. The Faroe 


Islands, Iceland, Greenland, and, in the 
West Indies, St. Croix, St. Thomas, and 
St. John belong to Denmark. Outsiders 
are not allowed to trade with Greenland. 
The Danish coins are smaller than ours; 
their measures are larger. The krone, con¬ 
sisting of 100 ore, is worth about twenty- 
eight cents. The Danish hundredweight 
or centner equals a trifle over 110 of our 
pounds. The mile is over 4J4 times 
as long as ours. Kerosene, syrup, vinegar, 
etc., are sold by the viertal, equal to 1.7 of 
a gallon. 

At one time the Danes were the greatest 
power in northern Europe. Their king¬ 
dom included all Scandinavia, as well as 
the greater part of the British Islands. Jut¬ 
land has been the prolific hive of swarms 
of enterprising marauders who were prop¬ 
erly feared by their neighbors. 

STATISTICS. 


Land area, square miles . 15,582 

Greatest altitude (feet) . 550 

Population . 2,775,076 

Copenhagen . 559,398 

Aarhus . 61,755 

Odense . 42,237 

Aalborg . 33,449 

Horsens . 23,843 

Randers . 22,970 

No. counties . 18 

Members of Landsthing. 66 

Representatives in Folkething . 114 

Salary of king. $280,000 

National expenditure . $25,000,000 

Pensions, old age. $1,200,000 

Bonded indebtedness. $80,000,000 

Acres under plow . 3,500,000 

Barley, bushels. 21,000,000 

Wheat, bushels . 3,000,000 

Oats, bushels . 40,000,000 

Rye, bushels . 18,000,000 

Horses . 534,000 

Cattle . 2,243,889 

Sheep . 726,000 

Swine . 1,466,000 

Goats . 39,000 

Beet sugar, pounds . 54,000,000 

Fisheries (1907) . $3,500,000 

Exports.$165,000,000 

Miles of railway . 2,115 

Seagoing ships. 4,321 

Brandy, gallons . 3,249,000 

Beer and ale . 56,000,000 

Savings banks deposits .$170,000,000 

No. of public schools . 3,413 

Pupils enrolled . 363,661 

No. postoffices . 1,073 

Letters and postcards (1909-10).. 172,000,000 
Volumes in Copenhagen library. 500,000 








































DENOMINATIONS—DENTISTRY 


Denominations. See Christianity. 

Density, in physics, the amount of mat¬ 
ter in a body, compared with its size. Judg¬ 
ing by the weight, a piece of iron contains 
seven or eight times as much as a piece 
of ice of the same size, while cork is about 
one-fourth as heavy as ice. Water is tak¬ 
en as the standard. A pound of cork and 
a pound of water weigh the same, and 
contain the same amount of matter; but 
a ctibic inch of cork contains only about 
one-fourth as much matter as a cubic inch 
of water. Scientists have agreed to use 
a cubic centimeter as the unit of volume 
and the amount of matter in a cubic cen¬ 
timeter of water as the unit of matter. 
Under standard conditions a cubic centi¬ 
meter of water weighs 1 gram, a cubic 
centimeter of cork weighs .24 grams, and 
a cubic centimeter of cast iron weighs 7 
grams. We say that the density of water 
is 1; of cork, .24; of iron, 7. By weigh¬ 
ing with care, we may build up 


A TABLE OF DENSITIES. 


Agate . 

Alcohol, absolute 
Alcohol, common 

Aluminum . 

Antimony, cast . 

Ash, dry . 

Asphalt . 

Beeswax . 

Bell metal. 

Benzine. 

Bismuth, cast ... 

Boxwood. 

Brass, cast . 

Brass, sheet .... 

Brick . 

Cedar, American 

Chalk. 

Cherry. 

Coal, anthracite . 
Coal, bituminous 
Copper, cast 
Copper, sheet .. . 

Cork . 

Diamond . 

Ebony . 

Emery . 

Ether. 

Fir, spruce. 

Fluor-spar . 

Galena. 

German-silver .. 
Glass, crown . .. 

Glass, flint. 

Glass, plate ... 
Glycerine . 


.2.615 

.0.806 

.0.833 

.2.670 

.6.720 

.0.690 

.2.500 

.0.964 

.8.050 

. .0.72 to 0.740 

.9.822 

.1.280 

.8.400 

.8.440 

...1.6 to 2.000 

.0.554 

...1.8 to 2.800 

.0.710 

. .1.26 to 1.800 
1.270 to 1.423 

.8.830 

.8.878 

.0.240 

.3.530 

.1.187 

.3.900 

.0.736 

.0.512 

.3.200 

.7.580 

.8.432 

.2.520 

.3.000 to 3.600 

.2.760 

.1.260 


Gold . 

Granite . 

Graphite . 

Gun-metal . 

Gypsum, crys. 

Hydrochloric acid, aq. sol. 

Ice. 

Iron, bar . 

Iron, cast . 

Iron, wrought .. 

Iron pyrites . 

Ivory . 

Lead, cast . 

Lead, sheet. 

Lignum vitae . 

Limestone.. 

Mahogany. 

Maple . 

Marble . 

Mercury . 

Nitric acid . 

Oak, American red . 

Oak, American white. 

Oil, turpentine. 

Paraffine . 

Petroleum . 

Phosphorus . 

Pine, white, dry . 

Platinum wire . 

Porcelain, china . 

Quartz . 

Silver, cast. 

Steel, unhammered . 

Sulphur, native . 

Sulphuric acid. 

Tin, cast. 

Walnut . 

Water, sea . 

Zinc, cast . 


.19.360 

.2.650 

.2.500 

.8.561 

. 2.310 

.1.222 

.0.917 

.7.788 

.7.230 

.7.780 

.5.000 

.1.820 

.11.360 

.11.400 

.1.333 

.3.180 

.. .0.56 to 0.852 

. 0.755 

. 2.720 

.13.596 

...1.38 to 1.559 

. 0.850 

. 0.779 

. 0.870 

. .0.824 to 0.940 

. 0.836 

. 1.830 

. 0.554 

.21.531 

. 2.380 

. 2.650 

10.424 to 10.511 

. 7.816 

. 2.033 

. 1.840 

. 7.290 

. 0.680 

. 1.027 

. 7.000 


Dentistry, the art of preserving, re¬ 
pairing, and, in need, of extracting teeth. 
So far as the history of dentistry can be 
traced, it appears to have originated among 
the Hindus or Egyptians. At least the 
teeth of Egyptian mummies are as old as 
any in which evidences of dentistry can be 
found. Artificial teeth fastened to adjacent 
teeth by gold bands are found in the tombs 
of the early Etruscans who preceded the 
Romans. European museums possess speci¬ 
mens of Phoenician teeth bound together 
with gold wire, Etruscan bridge work and 
gold teeth, and Roman plate work. A col¬ 
lection at Florence includes a skull having 
incisors bound with a gold band, dating, it 
is thought, from the fifth century B. C. 

The treatment of toothache was formerly 
a part of the surgeon-barber’s office. The 
making and filling of teeth was a part of 
the business of the goldsmith. The mod- 












































































DENVER 


ern dentist is a specialist who has taken 
the care and treatment of the teeth out of 
the hands of the surgeon and the gold¬ 
smith. The credit is due France. 

The first scientific work on the subject 
was written by Pierre Fanchard, who is 
styled the father of dentistry. It appeared 
in France in 1728. A skilled dentist ac¬ 
companied the French soldiers under Count 
Rochambeau who were quartered in Rhode 
Island during the winter of 1781-2. In 
those days a knowledge of dentistry was 
to be gained from a dentist only. There 
were no schools of dentistry. This French 
dentist, Lemaire, taught a young Ameri¬ 
can officer and a young surgeon who, after 
the close of our Revolutionary War, became 
eminent in practice. 

Modern dentistry has developed notably 
on American soil. A local association of 
dental surgeons met in New York in 1787, 
and a national organization met in the 
same city in 1840. In 1839 the first dental 
journal in the world was published in 
New York, and in 1840 the first dental 
college of the world was opened in Balti¬ 
more. From this date onward America has 
claimed the lead in dentistry, and, in this 
one branch of medical science, American 
leadership is very generally admitted. The 
term “American dentist” is used as a mark 
of superiority in European cities, ranking 
with “American tailor,” “American apples,” 
and “American shoes” in point of sign¬ 
board superiority. This reputation is due, 
however, less to scholarship than to the 
deftness and ingenuity of the American 
operator. 

Among the later triumphs of dentistry 

several mav be mentioned. Instead of con- 
«/ 

fining repairing to plugging cavities, any 
portion of a tooth is rebuilt to its original 
shape. During the work rubber coffer¬ 
dams are placed around a tooth to keep 
out moisture. Cavities are cleared out with 
whirling drills driven by means of elec¬ 
tricity or by a treadle. An electro mag¬ 
netic mallet is used to drive gold foil into 
place with rapid blows. It works on the 
same principles of attraction and release 
as an electric bell. 

Readymade porcelain teeth of all sizes 
and shapes are now turned out in factories 


to imitate natural teeth very closely. Crown 
work is a name given to a tooth fastened 
to sound, natural roots either by metallic 
dowels and cement, or by the latter rein¬ 
forced by a gold collar encircling the upper 
end of the root and the lower end of the 
crown. 

In making a set of false teeth the den¬ 
tist works from an impression of the gums 
taken with a plastic material consisting 
usually of plaster of paris, beeswax, or 
other similar material. 

Modern dentistry is giving attention not 
only to repairs but to an investigation of 
the causes of decay. There are nearly 
30,000 dentists in the United States and 
some sixty schools of dentistry. One New 
York factory makes 8,000,000 porcelain 
teeth in a year. Teeth valued at over $500,- 
000 are annually exported. Sixteen hun¬ 
dred pounds of fine gold go into American 
teeth every year. 

See Teeth. 

Denver, the capital of Colorado. It is 
situated at the eastern foot of the Rocky 
Mountains, one mile above sea level. The 
city was laid out in 1858, and was named 
for General Denver, the governor of the 
territory of Kansas, then including Colo¬ 
rado. Denver is noted for wealth, intelli¬ 
gence, scenery, and climate. Its immediate 
wealth is drawn from the mineral resources 
of the state, and is exhibited in magnificent 
parks, buildings, and streets. It is the me¬ 
tropolis of the Rocky Mountain mining 
region, being about 1,457 miles from San 
Francisco and 1,041 miles from Chicago. 
Railroads radiate in every direction. There 
are street railways, electric lights, and an 
unsurpassed city water system. By the 
census of 1910, Denver has a population of 
213,381. The public school system is very 
complete. The Denver high schools are 
noted. They are reinforced by the State 
University at Boulder. Denver University, 
maintained by the Methodists, has over 
1,000 students. There are several large li¬ 
braries. There are, in round numbers, forty 
newspapers and trade journals and 150 
churches. The State Capitol, built of 
Colorado granite, cost $3,250,000. In full 
view of the mountains, the city possesses 
a delightful climate. The air is dry, the 


DE PAUW—DE QUINCEY 


average rainfall being only fourteen inches 
a year. The atmosphere is wonderfully 
clear and bracing. The cold of winter is 
seldom prolonged. The excessively hot 
days of summer are few, and are succeeded 
by cool nights. The mean annual tempera¬ 
ture is slightly above that of Copenhagen, 
Chicago, and Boston. See Colorado. 

De Pauw University, an institution of 
higher learning at Greencastle, Indiana. It 
was founded by the Indiana Conference 
of the Methodist Episcopal Church as the 
Indiana Asbury University, and consisted 
of a college and a preparatory school. The 
first class was graduated in 1840. Hon. 
W. C. De Pauw of New Albany gave con¬ 
siderable sums of money at various times 
toward the better equipment of the uni¬ 
versity and bequeathed to the institution 
$1,000,000. In 1884 the corporation 
changed the name to De Pauw University 
in honor of Mr. De Pauw, and added de¬ 
partments of theology, law, art, music, and 
pedagogics. Graduate courses were also 
equipped in the college of liberal arts. In 
1910 De Pauw University had a library of 
about 25,000 volumes. There were 1,000 
students, and fifty members of the faculty. 

Depew, Chauncey Mitchell (1834-), 
an American lawyer and orator. He was 
born in Peekskill, New York. His educa¬ 
tion was received at Yale. After practicing 
his profession of law several years, serving 
also in the New York legislature, and as 
secretary of state of New York, Mr. Depew 
became attorney for the Harlem Railroad 
Company, beginning a successful career as 
a railroad lawyer. In twenty years he had 
attained the position of president of the 
New York Central and Hudson River 
Railroad Company, and later was made 
chairman of the whole Vanderbilt system 
of railroads. In 1899 he was elected to the 
United States Senate from New York. Mr. 
Depew’s name, however, is known most 
widely through his oratorical ability. 
Especially as an after-dinner speaker he 
has acquired wide reputation and great 
popularity. 

Depot, de'p5, a French word meaning 
a storehouse, as of provisions or merchan¬ 
dise. A railway warehouse for receiving and 
issuing freight is properly called a depot. 


The name should not be applied to a rail¬ 
way station designed for the accommodation 
of passengers. The parcel or baggage 
room is the only part of a station that might 
be called properly a depot or store room. 
A station is a depot only to such extent. 
In case of a building used for passengers 
and freight, the term station is to be pre¬ 
ferred. See St. Louis. 

De Quincey, Thomas (1785-1859), 
an English essayist. His father, a wealthy 
Manchester merchant, died in 1792. Thom¬ 
as was a shy, frail little fellow, fond of 
books; yet one summer he played the truant 
from school, put a volume of Greek into his 
pocket, and acted the vagrant in Wales 
and in London. At the Manchester Gram¬ 
mar School and at Oxford, he showed a 
genius for Latin and Greek, being regarded 
as little less than a prodigy. At fifteen he 
could converse in Greek fluently, yet he 
was a staunch advocate of the superiority 
of English literature. “We engage,” he 
said, “to produce many scores of passages 
from Chaucer, not exceeding fifty to eighty 
lines, which contain more of picturesque 
simplicity, more tenderness, more fidelity 
to nature, more felicity of sentiment, more 
animation of narrative, and more truth of 
character than can be matched in all the 
Iliad or the Odyssey 

In 1809 he took possession of a cottage 
at Grasmere in the Lake District, where he 
became intimate with the Lake Poets.'' Here 
he married. He indulged in the use of 
laudanum, a habit originally acquired in 
connection with the rheumatic toothache. 
Here he read, struggled with his vice, and 
wrote essays for The London Magazine 
and Blackwood’s of Edinburgh. His es¬ 
says fill a dozen thick volumes. Young 
readers may begin with Revolt of a Tartar 
Tribe, The English Mail Coach, Joan of 
Arc, and Confessions of an English Opium 
Eater. 

For so pleasing and prolific a writer De 
Quincey has left few sayings, but his 
whimsical way of writing is well shown 
in the following extract: 

Any man who deals in murder must have very 
incorrect ways of thinking and truly inaccurate 
principles. ... If once a man indulges him- 


DERBY—DESCARTES 


self in murder, very soon he comes to think lit¬ 
tle of robbing; and from robbing he comes next 
to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that 
to incivility and procrastination. Once begin 
upon this downward path, you never know where 
you are to stop. Many a man has dated his 
ruin from some murder or other that perhaps 
he thought little of at the time. 


A great master of English composition; a 
critic of uncommon delicacy; an honest and un¬ 
flinching investigator of received opinions; a 
philosophic inquirer, second only to his first and 
sole hero (Coleridge), De Quincey has left no 
successor to his rank. The exquisite finish of 
his style, with the scholastic rigor of his logic, 
form a combination which centuries may never 
reproduce, but which every generation should 
study as one of the marvels of English litera¬ 
ture .—London Quarterly Review. 

His charm, his merit, indeed, is not so much 
in the novelty of his thoughts as in the dazzling 
force of his rhetoric, his word-painting, his 
rhythm, his majestic swells and dying falls, which 
are to his bare ideas as autumn’s gorgeous 
dyes to the landscape.—Welsh. 

Derby, dar'by, an English shire, town, 
and noble family. All these are eclipsed 
by the fame of the Derby horse-race, in¬ 
stituted by the Earl of Derby in 1780. It 
is held annually on Epsom Downs, an ex¬ 
tensive plain near London, on the Wednes¬ 
day following Trinity Sunday. The races 
are for three-year-olds. The course is a 
mile and a half in length. The colts carry 
a weight, jockey and all, of 126 pounds; 
the fillies of 121 pounds. It costs $500 
to enter. The winner gets $25,000. Lord 
Rosebery had an ambition to marry the 
richest wife in England, to become prime 
minister, and—note the climax—to win a 
Derby race. He has succeeded in all three. 
The shortest time on record is that of Ket¬ 
tledrum in 1861. He ran the mile and a 
half in 2 minutes 43 seconds. 

On Derby day London is forsaken. Sub¬ 
urban trains are crowded. Every private 
vehicle and carriage is out. Superb equi¬ 
pages, with outriders, sweep along the road ; 
a thousand cabs are on the way. Work¬ 
men in clean jackets load down the drays. 
Bootblacks and newsboys, rags and gay 
ribbons,—afoot, on horseback, or awheel,— 
all London streams along to see the races. 
Social distinctions are almost forgotten as 
duke and newsy go mad in very ecstacy 
of joy when a favorite wins. The success¬ 


ful jockey is for the time greater than 
any crowned head of Europe. 

See Horse-Racing. 

Derrick. See Crane. 

Dervishes, a class of religious devotees. 
They are organized usually into an order 
of mendicant monks, and practice self-de¬ 
nial as holy men. They are found through¬ 
out Mohammedan countries and among 
the Hindu Brahmins. Socially they vary 
from outcasts, who make a living by prac¬ 
ticing sleight-of-hand and begging alms, 
to men who are held in high esteem for the 
devoutness of their lives, and who are ad¬ 
mitted to the homes of the wealthy. There 
are two general classes—the howling and 
the dancing dervishes. The latter dance 
to the sound of music, working themselves 
into a state of religious exaltation in which 
they preach moral sermons. The howling 
dervishes shout the name of Allah as they 
dance and work themselves into a pious 
frenzy not unlike an epileptic fit. They 
contort their bodies, gash themselves with 
knives, and go to extremes of self-torture. 
In a holy war the dervishes take the field 
and are formidable opponents. In battle 
they skirmish at the far front, urging their 
people on with fanatical fury. They throw 
themselves on the sword or bayonet without 
the least hesitation, like Arnold of Win- 
kelried, making way through the serried 
ranks for their frenzied followers. The 
English and French troops of India, and 
particularly of North Africa, have found 
the Arab dervishes a difficult element to 
deal with. 

Descartes, da-kart', Rene (1596-1650), 
the first of the great modern philosophers, 
noted also as a mathematician. He was of 
Hebrew parentage and was born at La 
Haye, near Tours, France. He showed un¬ 
usual ability as a student at the Jesuit Col¬ 
lege of La Fleche where he received his 
education. He became, however, dissatis¬ 
fied with the dogmas of scholasticism, 
which formed a large part of the instruc¬ 
tion he had received. After five years resi¬ 
dence in Paris he enlisted as a soldier, 
traveled for some years, especially in 
France and Italy, and at the age of thirty- 
three settled in Holland to devote himself 
to study and writing. That he might ar- 



DESDEMONA—DESERT 


rive at truth he cast aside his books and en¬ 
deavored to free his mind utterly from the 
prejudices of education. He was by nature 
of a mathematical turn of mind and his 
study of mathematics kept pace with that of 
philosophy, while his system of philosophy 
was constructed in accordance with mathe¬ 
matical methods of reasoning. Descartes’ 
system begins with self-consciousness as the 
basis of all positive knowledge. The oft- 
quoted phrase Cogito, ergo sum, “I think, 
therefore I exist,” expresses the principle 
which he used as a starting point. From 
the fact that man can form a concept of a 
perfect being he reasoned that perfection, 
as God, must exist. Truths thus known di¬ 
rectly he classed as innate ideas. From 
general truths he deduced individual facts, 
his method being known as the deductive 
method of reasoning. Descartes, perhaps 
more by his methods than by the results of 
those methods, exerted a profound influence 
upon the direction and development of 
metaphysical thought, although of course 
opposed bitterly by theologians and the 
disciples of Aristotle. 

As a mathematician Descartes made im¬ 
portant discoveries which he set forth in his 
Geometrie, and through which he hoped to 
establish a universal science of numbers 
which should include arithmetic, algebra, 
and geometry, and to which they should be 
subordinate. Although he failed in this idea 
his invention of analytical geometry and 
his various discoveries in the field of alge¬ 
bra mark a long step upward toward mod¬ 
ern mathematics. 

His works, the most important of which 
are Principles of Philosophy, and Essays, 
were of course written in Latin and pub¬ 
lished according to prevalent custom under 
the Latinized form of Descartes’ name, 
“Renartus Cartesius.” His system is often 
called Cartesian philosophy. 

Desdemona, des-de-mo'na, the heroine 
of Shakespeare’s tragedy, Othello. She is 
the daughter of Brabantio, a Venetian 
senator. Desdemona listens while'Othello, 
the Moor, recounts his many adventures to 
her father. Her admiration is won; then 
her love. She weds the Moor against her 
father’s wishes. Othello is led by Iago 
to believe his wife unfaithful, and in a fit 


of rage he smothers her. Desdemona’s 
character is well drawn. She is innocent, 
modest, and ingenuous. Incapable of any 
base suspicion herself, she is slow to real¬ 
ize that she may be suspected. 

Desert, an arid waste. This definition 
excludes the icy wastes of Greenland and 
the Antarctic country, as well as the fro¬ 
zen, lifeless tundras of the Arctic coast. 

A desert is not a rainless region, for there 
is no part of the earth’s surface without 
rainfall; but it is a region deficient in rain¬ 
fall. The Mojave Desert in Arizona has; 
but two inches a year. The coast of Chile 
near the Pacific has been seven years with¬ 
out rain. 

The desert zones of the world are two,, 
one in the southern and one in the northern, 
hemisphere. They lie approximately twen¬ 
ty-five degrees north and south of the equa¬ 
tor, in the two belts of wind that blow 
from the east. In the northern hemi¬ 
sphere the Pacific winds are robbed of their 
moisture by the mountains of eastern Asia. 
This, the greatest desert region in the 
world, begins with the desert of Gobi on 
the border of China. It stretches westward 
through Turkestan, Persia, Arabia, and the 
Sahara of North Africa—a vast arid waste. 
Part of this desert is the highest plateau 
land on the face of the globe, and part 
lies below the level of the sea. It is in¬ 
terrupted by fertile valleys, by local show¬ 
ers from local sources, and especially by 
the valley of the Nile; but all in all its 
extreme length is a third of the distance 
around the globe. It includes an area of 
between six and seven million square miles. 
Were it not for the Mediterranean, South¬ 
ern Europe would be a desert. In the west¬ 
ern continent the arid belt begins west of 
the Mississippi and culminates, if we may 
so speak of a depression, in the Death Val¬ 
ley of California. In the southern hemi¬ 
sphere, the desert belt is less marked. It 
includes the interior of Australia, the Kal¬ 
ahari region of South Africa, and the rain¬ 
less coast of northern Chile. 

A large part of the world, formerly re¬ 
garded as desert, has been reclaimed by 
irrigation and is now productive. There 
is no reason why deserts are deserts, save: 
the want of water. They contain stupen- 



DESERTED VILLAGE—DE SOTO 


dous mountain walls and rocky ledges, as 
well as level plains. The rock elements 
are present that by disintegration and the 
decay of vegetable matter have produced 
the fertile soil of other regions. Possibly 
the winds that now blow may one day 
turn windmills that will raise water from 
the sea to convert millions of barren acres 
into rich fields and pastures. Leaving out 
of account semi-arid steppes and plains that 
produce at least scant pasturage, it is esti¬ 
mated that the deserts of the world cover 
4,180,000 square miles of territory. 

Among the phenomena of the deserts are 
vast shifting drifts of sand, often deep 
enough to bury the highest steeple or the 
tallest forest. The whirlwinds and the 
changes of temperature from freezing at 
night to 150° at noon are to be dreaded. 

Deserted Village, The, a poem by Oli¬ 
ver Goldsmith, published in 1770. It is 
a composition of 430 lines in rhymed 
couplets, a form of poetry popular at 
that time. In it the poet first describes 
the village of Lissoy—the home of his 
childhood—as he remembers it; then in its 
present state, reduced to desolation by the 
usurpation of a wealthy landlord. The 
poem is simple and musical. It is full of 
feeling, expressed in graceful and harmo¬ 
nious language. The pictures of the village 
preacher and the schoolmaster are familiar. 

There, where a few torn shrubs the place disclose, 
The village preacher’s modest mansion rose. 

A man he was to all the country dear, 

And passing rich with forty pounds a year; 
Remote from towns he ran his godly race, 

Nor e’er had changed nor wished to change his 
place; 

• •••••• ••• 

There, in his noisy mansion, skilled to rule, 

The village master taught his little school; 

A man severe he was, and stern to view, 

I knew him well, and every truant knew; 

Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace 
The day’s disasters in his morning face ; 

Full well they laughed with counterfeited glee 
At all his jokes, for many a joke had he; 

Full well the busy whisper, circling round, 
Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned; 
Yet he was kind, or if severe in aught, 

The love he bore to learning was in fault. 

The village all declared how much he knew; 
’Twas certain he could write, and cipher too; 
Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage, 
And even the story ran that he could gauge. 

In arguing, too, the parson owned his skill, 

For e’en though vanquished, he could argue still. 


The Deserted Village describes, not a living 
and active, but a departed and vanished, exist¬ 
ence, which the poet has looked upon, loved and 
prized,—once a rural paradise, a seat of plenty 
and content; now a decay; a thing of memory, 
round which fancy and feeling twine their gold¬ 
en, ever lengthening chain. . . . It is a 

mirror of the author’s heart, of the fond pic¬ 
tures of early friends and early life forever sa¬ 
cred. Desolation has settled upon the haunts of 
his childhood, but imagination peoples the de¬ 
serted spot anew, rebuilds its ruined haunts, car¬ 
ries us back to the season of natural pastimes, 
of simple joys in romantic seclusion.—Welsh. 

Desert Land Act, a statute of the 
United States providing that any citizen 
may file on a tract of desert land not ex¬ 
ceeding 640 acres, in any one of several arid 
Western states, declaring his intent to irri¬ 
gate. If within three years he expend 
three dollars per acre in securing water 
rights and constructing waterworks, a pat¬ 
ent is issued for the land. Any number of 
individuals may associate, file joint dec¬ 
larations, and make joint expenditure to 
bring water from a distant point. See Irri¬ 
gation. 

Des Moines, the capital city of Iowa. 
It is situated near the center of the state, 
on both banks of the Des Moines River. 
Eight bridges cross the stream. The more 
prominent public buildings are the State 
Capitol, costing $3,000,000, and the City 
Library, erected at a cost of $500,000. Des 
Moines is the center of an extensive net¬ 
work of railways. Soft coal mined in the 
vicinity affords fuel and stimulates manu¬ 
facturing. Scales, engines, readymade 
clothing, cigars, wagons, starch, flour, type¬ 
writing machines, and electrical appliances 
are among the products. The site of the 
city was occupied in 1846. The popula¬ 
tion by the census of 1910 was 86,368. Des 
Moines has attracted no little attention by 
installing the commission system of city 
government. Though in an experimental 
stage, the plan gives promise of economy 
and efficiency. 

De Soto, da sd'td, Ferdinand, a 

Spanish soldier and explorer. He was born 
about 1496. He accompanied Pizarro in 
his conquest of Peru. Being deceived by 
reports as to the wealth of Florida, he 
was eager to explore that country. Charles 
I made him governor of Cuba and Florida. 


DETROIT 


In 1538 De Soto sailed for Cuba with ten 
ships, 600 men in armor, and a complement 
of sailors. Leaving his wife to govern 
Cuba, he landed at Tampa Bay, Florida, 
June 10, 1539. He sent most of his ships 
back to Cuba and started westward with 
his army in search of gold. He began the 
march with a number of horses. He 
brought also a herd of swine, which he pur¬ 
posed to drive along for food in case pro¬ 
visions should become scarce. Many of 
these are said to have escaped into the for¬ 
est, and to have been the ancestors of the 
half wild razor-back hogs formerly charac¬ 
teristic of the Southern States. 

The first winter was spent on the banks 
of the Flint River in Georgia. The com¬ 
mand subsisted largely on corn and game 
obtained from the natives. In the follow¬ 
ing spring De Soto and his men, burdened 
with heavy armor, toiled painfully over 
the Appalachians into the country of the 
Cherokees. Here they spent several 
months, wandering up and down the valleys 
of the Alabama in search of gold. In a 
battle with the Choctaws a score of his 
men were killed and two hundred were 
wounded. One Spanish chronicler of vivid 
imagination avers that 70 Spaniards and 
11,000 Indians fell in the conflict. The 
second winter was passed on the banks of, 
the Yazoo River among the Chickasaws. 
In May, 1541, De Soto discovered and 
crossed the Mississippi River somewhere 
not far from the present site, it is believed, 
of Memphis. In the presence of a body 
of natives, stated at 20,000 although there 
may not have been more than a dozen, De 
Soto erected a huge cross made from the 
trunk of a pine tree, and took possession 
of the Mississippi in the name of the king 
of Spain. After resting a few days the 
adventurers went up the western shore, 
it is thought, as far as New Madrid, Mo. 
The ensuing summer and winter they spent, 
still searching for gold, in the wilderness 
drained by the head waters of the Arkan¬ 
sas in a vain endeavor to reach the Spanish 
coasts in Me-xico. In the spring of 1542 
they returned to the Mississippi. De Soto 
contracted a fever and died. His soldiers 
buried him at first in a trench near an 
Indian village; but fearing either that the 


Indians might discover and mutilate the 
body, or else that the savages might dis¬ 
cover that the great captain was dead and 
thus be emboldened to attack the now 
weakened and dispirited army, they hol¬ 
lowed out the trunk of an evergreen oak, 
placed the body of De Soto in it, weighted 
the rude coffin with armor, and sank it in 
the bosom of the “Father of Waters.” 

This expedition was in many respects the 
greatest and most remarkable expedition 
of exploration ever undertaken in the New 
World. It is to be regretted that those 
who lived to tell the story were not content 
with the statement of the plain facts. 

Detroit, the metropolis of Michigan and 
adjacent territory. It is situated on the 
north bank of the Detroit River, from which 
it takes its name. The word is French, 
meaning the strait. The river is about twen¬ 
ty-five miles long. It leads from Lake St. 
Clair southward to Lake Erie. It widens 
in places to encircle hundreds of charming 
islands occupied by villas, vineyards, and 
orchards. At Detroit, the passage is about 
three-fourths of a mile wide and thirty- 
two feet deep. The current flows smoothly 
at a rate of two miles an hour. The river 
affords several miles of excellent wharfage 
and a safe anchorage. Boats laden with 
the wheat, lumber, iron ore, and copper 
of the Great Lakes, from Chicago to Du¬ 
luth pass Detroit on the way eastward. 
Salt, coal, nails, and other heavy articles 
of merchandise pass Detroit going west¬ 
ward. It is said that in tonnage, that is 
to say the number of tons of freight, the 
Detroit exceeds every other river or canal 
in the world. Twenty-five thousand laden 
boats pass yearly. Shipping alone, how¬ 
ever, is not what has made the city. De¬ 
troit ranks with Buffalo and Cleveland, 
but is preeminently a railroad town. Sev¬ 
en trunk lines center here. It is situated 
at the greatest crossing between the United 
States and Canada. More freight and pas¬ 
sengers cross the Canadian line here than 
at any other point between the two oceans. 
Trains run aboard double-tracked steam 
ferry boats and are carried across. An ex¬ 
pensive tunnel has been constructed by 
which they may pass beneath the channel 
of the river. 


DEUCALION—DEW 


The plan of the city is unique. Several 
fine avenues radiate like spokes from a 
point near the river. A park, called 
the Grand Circus, and the principal pub¬ 
lic buildings are located at this center. The 
rest of the city is laid out in the usual 
system of squares, bounded by streets run¬ 
ning with the points of the compass. 

The manufacturing interests of the city 
are large. The output was rated at $100,- 
000,000 for the year of the last census. 
Manufactures of steel, iron, tobacco, 
drugs, and liquors rank in the order named. 
Detroit is a center of the garden-seed in¬ 
dustry. “City of Pills” is a nickname 
gained by the manufacture of 6,000,000,- 
000 pellets a year. It is also the center of 
automobile industry, there being more auto¬ 
mobile factories here than in any other city 
of the United States. 

Detroit was settled originally by the 
French. It passed under British rule at 
the close of the French and Indian War. 
The historic defense of the fort in 1763 
is graphically told in Parkman’s Conspiracy 
of Pontiac . In 1805 it was made the capi¬ 
tal of Michigan Territory, then extending 
to the Mississippi River. The population 
in 1900 was 285,704. The State census of 
1905 reported 317,591. The census of 1910 
reports a population of 465,766. 

The city has the usual system of public 
schools, housed in over seventy buildings. 
There are a number of private academies. 
The Jesuits maintain Detroit College. 
There are over 200 churches. The Detroit 
Public Library contains 200,000 volumes. 
There are published in the city nearly 100 
periodicals, including dailies, weeklies, and 
magazines. The Museum of Art contains 
a very fine collection of relics of antiquity 
and scientific specimens, as well as a gal¬ 
lery of paintings. City water is obtained 
from the center of Lake St. Clair. Electric 
lights, railways, and well built, well swept 
streets give the city a metropolitan air. 

See Seeds; Pontiac; Michigan. 

Deucalion, du-ka'li-on, in Greek legend, 
a king of Phthia, in Thessaly. Deucalion 
was a descendant of the Titan Prometheus. 
He was a just man, and his wife Pyrrha 
was a faithful worshiper of the gods. 
During the Brazen and Iron Ages man be¬ 


came so impious that Zeus determined to 
destroy the entire race and start afresh 
with a new and more worthy type. He 
therefore sent a fearful deluge upon the 
earth, which destroyed all life. The earth 
became one vast sea, Mount Parnassus 
alone lifting its summit above the waters. 
Here Deucalion and Pyrrha, the only be¬ 
ings left alive, found refuge. Zeus, see¬ 
ing them on the mountain, and remember¬ 
ing their innocence and piety, decided that 
they might live. He sent the North Wind 
to scatter the clouds that the sun might 
again shine upon the earth. Poseidon, 
likewise, bade his trumpeter take his conch 
shell and sound the signal for the waves to 
retreat. When they could leave the moun¬ 
tain, Deucalion and Pyrrha visited a temple, 
which they found covered with mud and 
slime, and prayed for counsel. The oracle 
bade them leave the temple, and “with 
veiled heads cast behind you the bones of 
your mother.” The couple were astonished. 
They left the temple revolving this strange 
reply which commanded them to profane 
the remains of their parents, an impious act. 
At last Deucalion solved the riddle. 
“Earth is the great mother of us all,” said 
he, and forthwith picked up some stones 
from the hillside and threw them behind 
him. Pyrrha did the same. Deucalion’s 
stones assumed the form of men; Pyrrha’s 
the form of women,—both retaining so 
much of the nature of the stones from 
which they sprang as to be fitted to en¬ 
dure labor and hardship. Thus the world 
was peopled again, and in time the effects 
of the deluge disappeared. Deucalion be¬ 
came the father of Hellen, traditionally 
the ancestor of the Hellenes or ancient 
Greeks. See Mythology; Brazen Age. 

Devil. See Satan. 

Devilfish. See Octopus. 

Dew, a quiet deposit of atmospheric wa¬ 
ter on the surface of the earth. The proc¬ 
ess of dew making may be seen quite fre¬ 
quently on the surface of a water pitcher. 
A pitcher of iced water, placed on the ta¬ 
ble on a hot summer day, is apt to gather 
moisture from the air. Dew making is 
closely connected with the theory of satu¬ 
ration. Hot air holds more moisture than 
cold air. If air has all the water it can 


DEW—DEWEY 


hold, it is said to be saturated. If satu¬ 
rated air be cooled it deposits the water it 
cannot retain. The point of coolness at 
which air is unable to retain all its moist¬ 
ure is called the dew point. If the heated 
air around the ice pitcher be saturated, and 
the pitcher cools the adjacent air below 
what is called the dew point, the moisture 
which the air can no longer hold settles 
on the surface of the pitcher. 

During the summer season the earth 
cools off after nightfall, and then begins 
to absorb heat from the layer of saturated 
air lying next to it. If there be no wind 
to carry away the cooled air, it precipi¬ 
tates the water which it can no longer 
hold, and globules collect, not only on the 
surface of the earth, but especially on 
blades of grass or other vegetation, which 
cool much more rapidly than the earth 
itself. To understand the cooling of the 
earth, it must be kept in mind that the 
heat is radiated into space, not ^absorbed 
by the atmosphere. Clouds hovering over 
the earth’s surface act like a blanket to 
catch this radiated heat and throw it back 
to the earth’s surface again. For this rea¬ 
son dew forms chiefly on clear nights. The 
philosophy of dew making rests on the fact 
that the earth readily absorbs heat from 
the atmosphere, but gives it off into space, 
not into the adjacent air. 

See Frost; Rain; Snow. 

Dew Point. See Dew; Humidity. 

Dewar, Sir James (1842-), a professor 
of chemistry at the Royal Institution of 
London. He was born in Scotland, edu¬ 
cated there and in England, where he be¬ 
came a professor of natural philosophy at 
the University of Cambridge, which he left 
for his present position. He was associated 
in the invention of cordite, a smokeless 
powder, but is best known for his research 
in the realm of low temperatures and lique¬ 
faction of gases. In 1886 he succeeded in 
liquefying and even solidifying oxygen, 
nitrogen, and air. Fluorine, that previously 
most elusive element, succumbed to his ef¬ 
forts in 1897, and in 1901 he reduced 
hydrogen to a liquid and then a solid, thus 
reaching the lowest temperature ever at¬ 
tained, which, however, was several degrees 
above the absolute zero. 


Dewberry, a kind of bramble. Three 
or four wild dewberries are found in the 
northeastern, the southern, and the western 
parts respectively, of the United States. 
Their general nature is that of the black¬ 
berry, which see.-' The dewberry has of 
late received attention in gardens on ac¬ 
count of its ripening in advance of the 
blackberry. 

Dewey, George, an American naval 
commander. He was born at Montpelier, 
Vermont, December 26, 1837. He took 
the regular course of training at the An¬ 
napolis Naval Academy, graduating with 
the class of 1858. His first actual experi¬ 
ence in naval warfare occurred while serv¬ 
ing as a lieutenant in the fleet under Ad¬ 
miral Farragut. He took part in the open¬ 
ing of the lower Mississippi and in other 
naval operations of the Civil War. In 1870 
he received his first command in the war¬ 
ship Narragansett. In 1882 he joined the 
Asiatic squadron in command of the Juan¬ 
ita. Two years later he was made captain 
of the Dolphin. He was attached to vari¬ 
ous boards and bureaus of the navy de¬ 
partment. In 1898, just before the out¬ 
break of the Spanish-American War, he 
was placed in command of the United 
States squadron in Asiatic waters. April 
27, 1898, he set sail from China under or¬ 
ders “to capture or destroy the Spanish 
squadron,” then thought to be in Philip¬ 
pine waters. He entered the channel of 
Manila Saturday evening, April 30th, and 
early the next morning he captured or 
burned the entire Spanish fleet, silenced the 
land batteries, and took possession of 
the bay. Nine Americans were wounded; 
none were killed. On the 18th of August 
following the city of Manila was taken. 
In recognition of his decisive victory in 
Manila Bay Congress promoted Commo¬ 
dore Dewey to the rank of rear-admiral. 
By act of March 2, 1899, the rank of ad¬ 
miral of the navy was restored for the ex¬ 
press purpose of conferring honor on him. 
He is the third admiral of the American 
navy. His predecessors were Admirals 
Farragut and Porter. See Navy. 

Dewey, John (1859-), an American 
psychologist, author, and college professor. 
Burlington, Vermont, was Mr. Dewey’s 


DEXTRIN—DIAMOND 


birthplace and the University of Vermont 
his alma mater. After a course at Johns 
Hopkins University he filled successively 
the positions of professor of psychology at 
the University of Minnesota, and at the 
University of Michigan, professor of 
philosophy at the University of Chicago, 
and head of the department of philosophy 
at Columbia University. Mr. Dewey has 
become widely known as a lecturer and his 
publications have extended his reputation. 
These are on psychology and kindred sub¬ 
jects, and include Psychology, Psychology 
of Number, Leibnitz’ Essays Concerning 
the Human Understanding, The Critical 
Theory of Ethics, My Pedagogical Creed, 
School and Society. 

Dex'trin, a colorless, almost tasteless, 
gummy substance made from starch by 
treatment with acids or heat. It is a sub¬ 
stitute for gum and may be used for sizing, 
or in stiffening goods. The name origi¬ 
nated from its rotating the plane of polar¬ 
ized light to the right. As the backing of 
postage stamps and on ordinary envelopes 
it is familiar to all. 

Dhole, dol. See Dog. 

Diadem, di'a-dem, originally a head 
band, ribbon, or fillet passing around the 
head to hold back the hair. The ancients 
wore diadems of silk, linen, or wool, en¬ 
circling the forehead and temples, the ends 
being tied behind, so as to fall on the 
neck. We may imagine that the dia¬ 
dem was at first a plain band of cloth 
or leather; but, worn by royalty and rank, 
it was early adorned with embroideries, 
gold work, pearls, and precious stones. In 
later days the diadem has developed 
into the ducal coronet and crown made 
of costly metals and adorned with princely 
magnificence. 

Dial. See Sundial. 

Dial, The, a famous American quar¬ 
terly published for four years in Boston. 
It was a literary journal, and the recog¬ 
nized organ of the Trancendentalists. The 
first editor was Margaret Fuller, who, as¬ 
sisted by Ripley, Emerson, and others, filled 
the position from 1840 to 1842. Emerson 
was the editor during 1842-44. In 1902 
The Dial was reprinted with an intro¬ 
duction by G. W. Cooke. 


Di'alect, a language as spoken in some 
limited region and characterized by local 
peculiarities which distinguish it from the 
same language in its literary form, or as 
spoken in other regions where specific cir¬ 
cumstances have given it other peculiarities. 
When the facilities of travel were few, 
books scarce, and education confined to a 
limited class many dialects were spoken. 
It is said that at one time in England in¬ 
habitants of adjoining counties could 
scarcely understand one another. With the 
diffusion of knowledge conditions have 
changed, and while dialects are still com¬ 
mon the educated people of any country 
speak a uniform language. Students of 
the science of language have found often 
that supposedly distinct languages are but 
dialects of some one language, or that 
forms regarded as dialects are in reality 
distinct languages. The use of dialect in 
literature has become quite common in mod¬ 
ern times. Especially in fiction dialect is 
most fitting, for without it scenes and char¬ 
acters often would lose that which, more 
than all else, gives them life and reality. 
Many poets have made use of dialect al¬ 
though such poetry can hardly be regarded 
as of a high type. In spite of the critics, 
however, dialect poetry like Riley’s, for in¬ 
stance, will continue to reach and hold the 
popular ear. 

Diamond, a precious stone. A form 
in which pure carbon occurs in nature. 
As a stone it is a crystal, generally with¬ 
out color, but found also in many tints 
and colors as blue, red, green, black, light 
yellow, straw, brown, pink, and orange. 
The diamond is the hardest substance 
known. It cannot be scratched by any¬ 
thing but a diamond. It cannot be dis¬ 
solved by any known liquid nor melted 
under any attainable degree of heat. Any 
one who can afford to do so can burn a 
diamond, like a piece of coal, in oxygen. 
It consumes without ashes, giving off a 
brilliant light. When heated in a voltaic 
arc it crumbles into black lead. 

Diamond dust is used in the arts to 
cut and polish gems. The edge of a 
diamond is used to cut glass, or rather in 
producing a scratch along which the glass 
breaks readily. A sharp diamond point is 


DIAMOND 


used in engraving on glass and steel, and, 
when set in a lathe, for turning glass lenses. 
Cheap diamonds are used in the diamond 
drill in making holes for blasting rocks. 

As no tool will cut a diamond, the 
earliest method of dressing diamonds was 
that of grinding two diamonds together 
until the desired face had been formed. 
Under present methods, chips are split off 
until the stone approaches the desired 
shape. The faces are then held against 
a whirling disk of steel fed with oil and 
diamond dust, and rotated at a rate of 
2,000 to 3,000 revolutions per minute. 
This method of polishing was hit upon 
shortly before the discovery of America. 
The chips are saved for many purposes. 

Diamonds are cut into various shapes. 
The table stone is a flat slab-shaped gem 
with beveled edges. A rose diamond has 
a flat, circular, or elliptical under sur¬ 
face or base. Its upper surface consists of 
twelve or more triangular faces or facets, 
the uppermost of which come together in 
a point at the center. A third shape, 
the brilliant, gives the most sparkling effect. 
It is cut with facets on both the under 
and the upper surface. The top and back, 

however, terminate in flat facets instead 

» ' 

of points. Counting these two central 
faces, the upper part of a regular bril¬ 
liant has thirty-three faces and the lower 
part, or back, has twenty-five, making fifty- 
eight in all. 

Golconda, India, was long a center of 
gem cutting. Amsterdam in later times 
has been the great European diamond cut¬ 
ting center. One Amsterdam establishment 
claims to cut and polish 400,000 dia¬ 
monds yearly. America is the great re¬ 
tail diamond market of the world. About 
$525,000,000 worth, or one-third of the 
world’s diamonds, are owned in the United 
States. Of late improved methods connect¬ 
ed with the introduction of machinery 
have given American jewelers a claim to 
superiority in cutting as well. During the 
year of 1905 $36,060,000 worth of dia¬ 
monds and other precious stones were im¬ 
ported into the United States. 

Diamonds are widely distributed in na¬ 
ture. Small ones are found in a score of 
localities in the United States. The most 
ancient source of supply is India. In 


1728 diamonds were found in Brazil, in 
1829 in the Ural Mountains, and in 1867 
the rich South African diamond fields be¬ 
gan to attract attention. The richest dia¬ 
mond mines in the world are at Kimber¬ 
ley, South Africa, where a group of mines 
owned by a syndicate yields from ten to 
twenty million dollars’ worth annually. 

Diamonds occur in the shape of pebbles 
in beds of gravel, and are found by wash¬ 
ing the earth. It is not uncommon for 
a diamond to explode on reaching the sur¬ 
face. Some have been known to explode 
in the pockets or in the warm hands of 
the miners. The larger the diamond the 
more likely it is to fly into pieces. Large 
gems are sometimes imbedded in a raw po¬ 
tato as a protection against explosion. Dia¬ 
monds are weighed by the carat, 151.76 
of which equal an ounce Troy. A perfect 
gem of a pure white without flaw is 
called a diamond of the first water. 

Small artificial diamonds have been 
made by allowing carbon in molten iron 
to crystallize under high pressures, such 
as running the molten metal into a mold 
and cooling it quickly in cold water. 

One of the most noted diamonds is the 
Kohinoor or “Mountain of Light.” Af¬ 
ter passing through various vicissitudes, in¬ 
cluding the sack of Delhi, it came into 
the possession of the East India Com¬ 
pany, by whom it was presented to the Eng¬ 
lish crown. It has been reduced by suc¬ 
cessive recuttings, the last in 1852, to a 
weight of 106.16 carats. 

The Orloff diamond forms the point of 
the royal scepter of Russia. It is a fine 
rose diamond, weighing 194% carats. It 
was at one time the eye of an Indian 
idol at Mysore. Prince Orloff bought it 
through an Armenian merchant in 1772 for 
450,000 silver roubles, and presented it. 
to Queen Catharine of Russia. 

The Regent or Pitt diamond is also from 
India. It weighs 136% carats, and is 
considered one of the most beautiful gems 
in existence. It is guarded as one of the 
treasures of the Louvre in Paris. 

Of late astonishing finds have been made 
at Kimberley. The mine is 640 miles from 
Cape Town, a ride by rail of two days and 
one night. The mine itself is the crater 
of an extinct volcano. The general sur- 


DIAMOND NECKLACE 


face of the country is level. The crater 
is about 312 feet deep. Diamonds were 
found in the gravel. Workmen have dug 
300 feet lower, so that the mine is now 
612 feet deep. A blue rock is lifted to 
the surface by powerful machinery, and 
spread out on the grounds to dry. In the 
course of a year, under the influence of the 
sun, rain, and winds, it decomposes and 
falls apart. It is then crushed, washed 
and sifted, and passed finally over shaking 
tables, covered with a certain sort of grease 
that catches and retains the diamonds. 
These are then washed in an acid, sorted, 
valued, and sold to a syndicate. One thou¬ 
sand tons of blue rock yield 500 pounds 
of diamonds. The company employs 15,- 
000 natives and 25,000 whites. Two hun¬ 
dred thousand horses are worked. A town 
of 35,000 people has grown up at the mine. 
At the end of 1904 it was estimated that 
diamonds worth $300,000,000 had been 
shipped from Kimberley. These gems 
would fill a box five feet square and six feet 
deep. The largest diamond produced at 
the Kimberley mine is one now known as 
the Syndicate. It weighed 960 carats in 
the rough. It is owned by Tiffany of New 
York. 

The largest diamonds ever known have 
been found recently in the Premier mine 
at Johannesburg, South Africa. In March, 
1905, a huge gem was found which was 
named the Culinan diamond. It weighed, 
uncut, 3,251 carats, or over a pound and a 
naif. It was presented by the Transvaal 
government to King Edward. It was val¬ 
ued at $2,500,000. It has been split to 
form two large gems. These are known as 
Culinan I and Culinan II. They weigh 
516J4 and 309 3/16 carats respectively. A 
second gem found since in the same mine 
weighs 460 carats. It is four times as 
large as the famous Kohinoor. It is prac¬ 
tically flawless and is valued at $1,500,000. 

See Carbon ; Coal. 

Diamond Necklace, The Affair of 
the, in French history, a celebrated episode 
at court. The famous necklace was made 
by the court jeweler, either by order of 
Louis XV for his mistress, Madame Du 
Barry, or with the expectation that it 
would be purchased for her by Louis XV. 


Louis’ death, 1774, and the banishment 
of Du Barry left the necklace without a 
purchaser. It was a magnificent ornament, 
containing about 500 diamonds, and was 
valued at $400,000. The Prince-Cardinal 
de Rohan several years later became in¬ 
fatuated with the charms of Queen Marie 
Antoinette, who, however, was entirely in¬ 
different to him. The cardinal was led to 
believe, by an adventuress • calling herself 
Countess Jeanne de Lamotte, that the 
queen looked upon him with some de¬ 
gree of favor. By skillful maneuvering, 
including the forgeries of the queen’s sig¬ 
nature, Lamotte, as this woman is usually 
called, persuaded the cardinal that the 
queen was anxious to purchase the dia¬ 
mond necklace, and that if he would aid 
her to do so, she would show him favor. 
A clever plan was laid by Lamotte to 
get possession of the necklace. At her sug¬ 
gestion the cardinal purchased the neck¬ 
lace in the queen’s name and became re¬ 
sponsible for a series of payments. The 
necklace was conveyed to the cardinal, 
whence it was taken by a person in the 
uniform and with the manner of a court 
valet, who procured it “in the name of 
the queen.” When the day of the first 
payment arrived, and no money was re¬ 
ceived, the jeweler went to court and 
started an investigation. This was the first 
the queen had heard of the purchase. La¬ 
motte had disappeared, but she was found; 
and it was discovered that she, her husband, 
and the “valet” had separated the diamond 
necklace into sections which they were sell¬ 
ing. The imposter, Count Cagliostro, had 
become involved in the affair also. He had 
been consulted by the cardinal on account 
of his professed power to read the future, 
and had prophesied that the correspondence 
with the queen would end happily. Doubt¬ 
less Cagliostro received his share of the 
profits. All—the tricksters and the tricked 
—cardinal, Cagliostro, Lamotte, and the 
“valet”—were arrested and confined in the 
Bastille. When the matter came to trial, 
Cagliostro was released, but ordered to 
leave France. Lamotte was branded with 
a hot iron on either shoulder, to mark her 
“thief,” and was imprisoned for life. The 
cardinal was shown to have committed an 


DIANA—DIAPHRAGM 


act of folly, but nothing worse, and was 
therefore released. 

The saddest part of the whole affair was 
that the scandal increased popular feeling 
against the queen, who had been entirely 
blameless, and, in fact, ignorant of it all. 
The populace of Paris, in * that state of 
excitement and rage which terminated in 
the Reign of Terror, could not be con¬ 
vinced of this; and, even at the last, the 
cursing mob which surrounded the cart 
that bore the unfortunate Marie Antoinette 
to the guillotine, cast slurs upon her on 
account of this diamond necklace affair. 
The necklace itself had disappeared for¬ 
ever. Alexander Dumas has made use of 
this story in a novel entitled The Queen’s 
Necklace. 

Diana, in Roman mythology, the god¬ 
dess of the moon, of the open air of the 
country, mountains, and forests. Since 
her attributes were similar to those of the 
Greek Artemis, the' two were in later times 
identified. Originally, Artemis was the 
daughter of Zeus, and twin sister of Apollo. 
Apollo was the god of day, of light, of 
music, and of song. He was called Phoe¬ 
bus, the shining one, and, because of her 
close association with him, his sister was 
called Phoebe. Apollo came to be identi¬ 
fied with Helios, god of the sun; so Ar¬ 
temis was identified with Selene, goddess 
of the moon. Thus the three distinct char¬ 
acters, Diana of the Romans, and Artemis 
and Selene of the Greeks, were gradually 
confounded, although in some re¬ 

spects stories concerning them were con¬ 
tradictory. For instance, Diana—at her 
own desire, for she had many suitors 
remained a virgin, while Selene became 
the mother of fifty daughters. Finally, in 
the times of the later mythology, Diana, 
either on account of her character or her 
name, became the favorite; and the stories 
of Artemis or Selene or any goddess asso¬ 
ciated with the moon, as Luna and Hecate, 
gathered about her figure, which is most 
often seen in representations of art. 

Diana is to be identified with the witch¬ 
ing influence of mellow ^moonlight. At 
her own request Zeus permitted her to re¬ 
main unmarried, and caused thirty cities to 
celebrate her worship. Diana was devoted 
I.X-26 


to the chase. Accompanied by her nymphs, 
she delighted in a forest life and in hunt¬ 
ing. Agamemnon having unwittingly killed 
a stag sacred to Diana, she sent a plague 
upon the camp of the Greeks before Troy. 
She was appeased only by the sacrifice of 
the chieftain’s daughter, whom she snatched 
from the altar, however, and bore away, 
leaving a hind in her place. She became 
infatuated also with the giant, Orion, whose 
death was brought about by Apollo through 
a ruse. She punished Actaeon, the hunter, 
for surprising her while bathing in a foun¬ 
tain, by changing him into a stag, so that 
he was torn to pieces by his own hounds. 

In art, Diana is represented commonly 
as a light-footed maiden of the chase, carry¬ 
ing a bow and a quiver full of arrows. 
One of the most renowned temples of her 
worship was at Ephesus. Ben Jonson’s 
Hymn to Diana is an exquisite poem in 
which the poet has “seized upon the spirit 
of ancient song.” 

Queen and huntress, chaste and f,>.ir, 

Now the sun is laid to sleep, 

Seated in thy silver chair, 

State in wonted manner keep: 

Hesperus entreats thy light. 

Goddess, excellently bright. 

Earth, let not thy envious shade 
Dare itself to interpose; 

Cynthia’s shining orb was made 
Heaven to clear when day did close: 

Bless us then with wished sight. 

Goddess, excellently bright. 

Lay thy bow of pearl apart, 

And thy crystal shining quiver; 

Give unto the flying hart 

Space to breathe, how short soever: 

Thou that mak’st a day of night, 
Goddess, excellently bright. 

Diaphragm, dl'a-fram, a Grecian word 
meaning a partition wall. In mechanics 
and anatomy, the term is applied to any 
thin curtain or partition, as the vibrating 
diaphragm of a telephone upon which the 
impulse of the voice falls; the curtain 
which is used in a photographic camera 
to cut off the light; and particularly the 
curtain-like muscle which separates the 
cavity of the chest from that of the ab¬ 
domen. The human diaphragm is shaped 
something like an umbrella, point upward. 
Its muscular bundles are arranged on the 
under side somewhat like the rays of an 
umbrella, When the diaphragm contracts,, 


DIAS—DICE 


that is to say, when these muscles swell 
and shorten, it is stretched more nearly 
straight across the body, and, as the point 
sinks, it enlarges the chest cavity, causing 
the lungs to inhale air. When the dia¬ 
phragm is relaxed, its elasticity causes it 
to assume its natural form, and the cen¬ 
ter of the diaphragm rises, diminishing 
the upper or chest cavity, thus driving 
air out of the lungs. Thus we see that 
taking a breath is largely an action of 
the diaphragm. Sometimes the diaphragm 
is affected with periodic twitchings which 
seem beyond control. One of these, the 
sneeze, is caused by a sudden relaxation, 
that is to say, upward bound of the dia¬ 
phragm. Hiccoughs are caused by spas¬ 
modic contractions of the same organ, the 
action being the exact opposite of a sneeze. 
In zoology, the diaphragm is a calcareous 
plate dividing the cavity of certain shells 
into two parts. 

Dias, Bartholomew (1445-1500), a 
Portuguese navigator. He was a member 
of the royal household. In 1486 he ob¬ 
tained command of an expedition sent out 
to explore the coast of western Africa. 
Whether by luck or by storm, he lost his 
way; the two ships rounded the southern 
extremity of Africa without knowing it, 
and reached the coast at a point east of 
the Cape of Good Plope. He explored 
the eastern coast for about 500 miles and 
returned via the Cape with the great news 
of an open sea route to India. In 1498 
Dias started with Vasco da Gama’s fleet, 
but fell behind to trade on the African 
coast. He accompanied Da Gama again 
in 1500. His ship was lost in a storm off 
the coast of Brazil. See Brazil; Da 
Gama. 

Diaz, de'as, Porfirio (1830-1915). 

President of the Republic of Mexico from 
1876 to 1911. His mother was an Indian. 
Pie was educated in a local “college” and 
was a student of law when the Mexican 
War came on. He was practically the gov¬ 
ernment of Mexico from 1876 to 1911. 
While his government was essentially a 
despotism, he gave the Mexicans security 
of life and property and freedom from 
revolution. He encouraged the investment 
of American money in Mexican projects. 


His was a type of “benevolent despotism” 
that apparently worked to the advantage of 
the Mexican people. 

Following are important events in his 
career: 

1830—Born in Oaxaca, the son of an Indian 
mother. 

1846—Enlisted in the war against the United 
States. 

1854—Took part in the revolt against Santa Anna. 

1858— Supported Juarez in war of reform. 

1859— Opposed the French in the war of inter¬ 

vention. 

1863—Was captured by the French but escaped. 
1867—Forced Maximilian to surrender City of 
Mexico. 

1867—Was candidate for president, but defeated 
by Juarez. 

1871—Was proscribed by Lerdo, the successor of 
Juarez. 

1876—Repudiated Lerdo and led revolution to 
victory. 

1876— Was made provisional president in Novem¬ 

ber. 

1877— Regularly elected president for three-year 

term. 

1880—Secured election of Gonzales as his suc¬ 
cessor. 

1880-84—Served in cabinet as senator and gov¬ 
ernor of Oaxaca. 

1884—Again elected president and re-elected re¬ 
peatedly. 

1911—Abdicated in the face of a revolution, and 
sailed June 1 from Vera Cruz for Spain. 

Dibdin, Thomas Frognall (1776- 

1847), a London bibliomaniac or book- 
lover. He was born at Calcutta and died 
at Kensington. He was by profession a 
clergyman. He was noted as a lover of 
books. One in two volumes, written by 
himself, he entitled The Library Compan- 
ion, or the young man’s guide and old 
man’s comfort in the choice of a library. 
In 1812 he founded the Roxburghe Club 
which met to dine and talk over rare books. 
One rule of the club required each member 
to reprint some rare work each year for 
presentation to his fellows. Dibdin’s Bib¬ 
liomania is of interest to booklovers. He is 
a nephew of the Charles Dibdin who wrote 
numerous naval songs, including Poor Tom 
Bowling and The Flying Can. Dibdin 
will be better remembered by American 
readers by reason of Field’s humorous 
poem entitled Dibdin’s Ghost. See Field. 

Dice (plural of die), small cubes of 
wood, bone, ivory, or other material, hav¬ 
ing the six sides marked with dots, one to 


DICKENS 


six in number. The sum of the spots 
on any two opposite sides must be 7; as 1 
and 6, 2 and 5, 3 and 4. A one spot is 
called an ace, a two spot a deuce, etc. 
In playing, from one to five dice are shaken 
in a cylindrical leather cup, and are thrown 
out on a table. The sides that lie upper¬ 
most are the ones that count. There are 
various ways of counting the spots. Some¬ 
times the player who throws the highest 
number of spots is considered the winner. 
Usually, however, a pair, as two aces, two 
fours, etc., is considered higher than any 
number of unmatched spots, while three of 
a kind is higher than a pair. Three fours 
are, of course, better than three twos. The 
throwing of dice is so intimately associated 
with gambling, and with the petty practice 
of throwing for cigars or drinks, that it is 
considered an objectionable parlor game. 
“The die is cast,” is also a proverbial ex¬ 
pression, denoting that an irrevocable step 
has been taken. Games with dice were 
practiced by the ancient Greeks and Egyp¬ 
tians. 

Dickens, Charles, an English novelist. 
He was born near Portsmouth, February 
7, 1812. His father held a very respectable 
position in the pay department of the Brit¬ 
ish navy, with an income of $1,750, equiva¬ 
lent to $2,500 at the present time. He 
supported his family in comfort. The child¬ 
hood of Dickens was happily spent in 
roaming about the countryside, in romping, 
playing games, attending school, and read¬ 
ing. He was fond of imaginative reading. 
Among his favorite books were The Vicar 
of Wakefield, Don Quixote, Robinson 
Crusoe, and Arabian Nights . 

When Charles was about ten or twelve 
years old the Dickens family moved to 
London. The father appears to have been 
an easy-going, indulgent man, who spent 
money faster than he made it. According 
to an English custom of The time, he was 
arrested for debt and thrown into prison. 
Mrs. Dickens attempted to support the 
family by opening a private school. Em¬ 
ployment was found for Charles in a ware¬ 
house engaged in the manufacture of shoe¬ 
blacking. A room was rented for him, 
and he -was allowed his wages to buy his 
meals or to use as he pleased. This was a 
sad change in circumstances. Hitherto 


servants had blacked the shoes of the en¬ 
tire family. Charles would have consid¬ 
ered it beneath him to black his own shoes, 
and now to be engaged in the making of 
blacking was a grievous humiliation. He 
never referred to this period of his life 
without showing bitterness. It appears, 
however, to have been of great benefit to 
him. He was thrown on his own resources. 
He saved money from his lunches to buy 
comic papers and to attend the theater. He 
roamed about the book stalls and streets 
of London, and without becoming in the 
least depraved, became acquainted with the 
pickpocket, thieving side of London life, 
which he afterward made famous in such 
books as Oliver Twist and Old Curiosity 
Shop. 

Later, the fortunes of the family 
mended; the elder Dickens was released 
from prison and Charles was sent again 
to school. He entered a law office to 
prepare himself for the profession, but 
did not enjoy the work. He learned, in¬ 
stead, shorthand, and began reporting par¬ 
liamentary debates for the London papers. 
In this he was so successful that he was 
sent out at election time to write up the 
scenes connected with the elettion of mem¬ 
bers of Parliament. One step led to an¬ 
other. He soon began writing bright 
sketches on such subjects as The Election 
for Beadle, Greenwich Fair , and Seven 
Dials. As in the case of Kipling, Thack¬ 
eray, Fields, and other noted writers, 
newspaper work led him on into litera¬ 
ture. The reception of the sketches men¬ 
tioned was so encouraging that he wrote 
next a connected series describing the ad¬ 
ventures and observations of an old gen¬ 
tleman and one or two companions, who 
set out to tour England and see something 
of the world. These sketches are known 
as the Pickimck Papers. They made Dick¬ 
ens famous and independent. 

He bought Gadshill, a piece of prop¬ 
erty near Rochester, that he had much ad¬ 
mired when a boy. He rebuilt the house 
to suit his own notions, and built himself 
a sort of eyrie or elevated study up in 
the tree-tops, where he could be alone and 
from the windows of which he could see 
a wide stretch of surrounding country. 


DICKENS 


i 


He never cared to go far from London, 
however. He claimed that the rattle and 
noise of the streets, and the crowds of 
people gave him the opportunity to select 
characters and scenes for his novels. 

Dickens’ works give a wonderful pic¬ 
ture of England, especially London life, 
as he saw it. David Copperfield is sup*- 
posed to give a glimpse of Dickens’ boy¬ 
hood, but it is much too sorrowful. The 
Tale of Two Cities is a story of the French 
Revolution. Nicholas Nickleby acquaints 
the reader with the country boarding 
school kept by Mr. Wackford Squeers, the 
Yorkshire schoolmaster. Little Dorrit dis¬ 
cusses Marshalsea and imprisonment for 
debt. Bleak House shows how the delays 
of the law eat up property and ruin cli¬ 
ents. Martin Chuzzlewit exposes the re¬ 
nowned hypocrite, Mr. Pecksniff, and, in¬ 
cidentally, the questionable methods of 
Americans in luring settlers to make un¬ 
profitable investments in wild lands. Bar- 
naby Rudge, Dombey and Son, and Our 
Mutual Friend are good reading. 

Dickens was fond of children and very 
much attached to the Christmas season. 
As it approached he used to take his chil¬ 
dren to the toy shops and let them pur¬ 
chase everything they wanted. The Dick¬ 
ens home was turned over to Christmas 
festivities. For a number of years he made 
it a practice to wiite a Christmas story for 
each holiday season. The Christmas Car¬ 
ol, The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, 
and many others were written in this way. 

That Dickens aimed consciously in many 
of his works to bring about reform in ex¬ 
isting institutions and conditions is shown 
in the prefaces to the early editions. In 
these attempts he was remarkably success¬ 
ful. Daniel Webster said that Dickens had 
done more to ameliorate the condition of 
the English poor than all the statesmen 
Great Britain had sent into Parliament. 
He attacked such evils as imprisonment 
for debt, the poorhouse systems, the man¬ 
agement of the court of chancery, capital 
punishment (prescribed at the beginning 
of the nineteenth century for more than 
160 offenses), above all, the prevailing sys¬ 
tems of education. It has been said that 
“no other writer has attacked so many 


phases of wrong training, unjust treatment, 
and ill usage of childhood.” His name has 
been coupled with Froebel’s as one of the 
two most sympathetic friends of child- 
’ hood. 

Dickens visited America twice to give 
courses of lectures. He wrote a volume 
of observations, called American Notes, 
that gave offense, but no doubt did Ameri¬ 
cans good by making them see them¬ 
selves as others see them. Although his 
complete works extended to thirty volumes, 
one who has acquired a taste for Dickens 
is unwilling to leave a single volume un¬ 
read. While he has left perhaps few pro¬ 
verbial expressions that pass current, he is 
remarkable for his description and charac¬ 
ter sketches. He is a master hand at de¬ 
scribing a fire, a runaway, a thief chase, 
the arrest of a pickpocket, a murder scene, 
a dinner table, a courtroom, a crowded 
steamboat, a wharf landing, an old build¬ 
ing, a stretch of country, a shrieking rail¬ 
way train. Certainly no one else can make 
the wind howl through the chimney pots 
like Dickens. 

His characters are genuine creations. 
Squeers, Pecksniff, Dolly Varden, Micaw- 
ber, Captain Cuttle, Peggotty, Barkis, Sir 
Mulberry, Smike, Little Nell, Betsy Trot- 
wood, Uriah Heep, Mr. Gradgrind, Mr. 
Boffin, Mark Tapley, Barnaby and his ra¬ 
ven, Quilp, Pickwick, and Sam Weller are 
quite as real as Shakespeare’s characters. 

Dickens died quietly at Gadshill June 
9, 1870. He was buried in the Poets’ Cor¬ 
ner of Westminster Abbey, between the 
statues of Addison and Campbell. 

The following is a list of Dickens’ 
works: 

American Notes. 

Barnaby Rudge. 

Bleak House. 

Child’s History of England. 

Christmas Books. 

David Copperfield. 

Dombey and Son. 

Great Expectations. 

Hard Times. 

Little Dorrit. 

Martin Chuzzlewit. 

Nicholas Nickleby. 

Old Curiosity Shop. 

Oliver Twist. 

Qu v Mutual Friend,. 


DICTIONARY 


Pickwick Papers. 

Sketches by Boz. 

Tale of Two Cities. 

1 he Mystery of Edwin Drood. 

Uncommercial Traveler. 

No one thinks first of Mr. Dickens as a writer. 
He is at once, through his books, a friend. He 
belongs among the intimates of every pleasant- 
tempered and large-hearted person. He is not 
so much the guest as the inmate of our homes. 
He keeps holidays with us, he helps us to cele¬ 
brate Christmas with heartier cheer, he shares at 
every New Year in our good wishes; for, indeed, 
it is not in his purely literary character that he 
has done most for us, it is as a man of the 
largest humanity, who has simply used literature 
as the means by which to bring himself into re¬ 
lation with his fellow-men, and to inspire them 
with something of his own sweetness, kindness, 
charity, and good-will.— North American Review, 
April, 1868. 

Dickens has introduced a reform as to the 
habit of terrorizing children. Corporal punish¬ 
ment has diminished to one-fourth of its former 
amount, and Charles Dickens is the prophet to 
whom the reform owes its potency. . . . Dickens 
shares with all reformers some of their weak¬ 
nesses, but he does not share his most excellent 
qualities with many of them. He stands apart 
and alone as one of the most potent influences 
of social reform in the nineteenth century, and 
therefore deserves to be read and studied by 
all who have to do with schools and by all 
parents everywhere in our day and generation.—• 
W. T. Harris. 

The chief work of Dickens was to lay bare the 
injustice, the meanness, and the blighting coercion 
practised on helpless children not only by “igno¬ 
rant, sordid, brutal men called schoolmasters,” 
but in a less degree by the best teachers and 
parents of his time. His was a noble work, and 
it was well done.—James L. Hughes. 

It is as a humorist that Dickens is at his best. 
There is a whimsical and ludicrous extravagance 
in his humor, an irresistible ingenuity in the 
ridiculous, peculiar to him alone. From the time 
when a delighted people waited in rapturous im¬ 
patience for the forthcoming number of Pickwick, 
to the publication of the unfinished Edwin Drood 
(1870), nineteenth century England laid aside 
her weariness and her problems to join in Dick¬ 
ens’ overflowing, infectious laughter.—Pancoast. 

Dictionary, a book containing a list 
of the principal words of the language, 
with their definitions and pronunciations. 
Some dictionaries give not only the present 
meaning of the words but the source from 
which each word came, with its successive 
changes and meanings. The pronunciation 
is determined by the usage of the best speak¬ 
ers, although there is disagreement about 


some words. In such a case both of the 
pronunciations are given with the preferred 
one first. The arrangement of words is 
alphabetical in all common dictionaries. 
Small pocket dictionaries are made contain¬ 
ing none of the inflections and with only 
the common words given. The oldest dic¬ 
tionary known consists of clay tablets found 
in the library of Nineveh. Their date is 
about 650 B. C. The cuneiform inscriptions 
of the Babylonians are placed in vertical 
lines, each followed by explanations in the 
same kind of character. Several Greek lex¬ 
icons are known to have been written. A 
dictionary of the words used by Homer, pre¬ 
pared at the University of Alexandria, is 
one of the oldest that has been preserved. 
A number of English dictionaries, the old¬ 
est dating from 1616, were succeeded in 
1755 by Dr. Samuel Johnson’s famous dic¬ 
tionary of the English language. Other 
dictionaries still referred to are those of 
Perry, Sheridan, Walker, and Smart. The 
earliest American dictionary maker was 
Noah Webster. His first edition appeared 
in 1806. His American Dictionary, the 
first large American work, was published 
in 1828. It was the forerunner of the In¬ 
ternational of 1890. Other American dic¬ 
tionaries are the Worcester, the Standard, 
and the Century. The Century is a re¬ 
vision of the large English work of Ogil- 
vie. At the present time, Murray’s Eng¬ 
lish Dictionary on Historical Principles, is 
passing through the English press. It is 
intended to include every word in Eng¬ 
lish literature, with a complete history of 
each. Under the letter B, for instance, 
there are 17,729 words. The set will in¬ 
clude many volumes, and is designed chief¬ 
ly for college libraries. As to number, the 
International Dictionary defines about 
400,000 words and phrases, the Century 
about 300,000 words. The Standard vo¬ 
cabulary claims 425,000 words. The vari¬ 
ous Romance languages have about 125,- 
000 words. 

Words related to the word dictionary 
are; lexicon, a dictionary of an ancient or 
oriental language; vocabulary, a word list 
accompanying a foreign book with defini¬ 
tions in the reader’s language; glossary, a 
list of obscure, unusual, or antiquated 
words, usually accompanying a special 


DIDEROT—DIDO 


work; gazetteer, a dictionary of place 
names. 

Diderot, Denis, de-ne de-dro' (1713- 
1784), a French philosopher and writer. 
He was born at Langres. His father gave 
him a classical education, designing him 
for the church. The young man disliked 
this calling, however, and was no better 
pleased with the law, which he tried for 
a short time. His father was so displeased 
with him that he refused further aid. 
Young Diderot had a hard time for many 
years. He married at the age of thirty, 
increasing his cares, with no increase in in¬ 
come. About the same time he began to 
turn his attention to literature. He wrote 
philosophical essays, made translations, 
and wrote dramas. The latter were en¬ 
tirely unsuccessful. Diderot’s really impor¬ 
tant work was the Encyclopedie, regarded 
as one of the principal works of the age in 
France. He and D’Alembert were joint 
editors. Diderot wrote the articles on his¬ 
torical subjects, on ancient philosophy, 
and on the mechanical arts and industries. 
Fie revised all articles. He was fitted 
both by natural gifts and by education for 
this work, which occupied him for thirty 
years. Diderot was a somewhat fanatical 
atheist. He was desirous of converting his 
' countrymen to his views. He propagated 
his ideas to some extent through his en¬ 
cyclopedia. Rameau’s Nephew and The 
Nun are two of Diderot’s stories. They 
give effective pictures of the corrupt society 
of the time. 

Dido, di-do, in classical legend, the 
queen of Carthage. She may have been 
a historical character, but the stories told 
of her are essentially inconsistent. Accord¬ 
ing to the common legend she was sister 
of Pygmalion, king of Tyre. Her brother 
slew her husband for his wealth. But 
Dido, taking the treasure for which her 
husband had been murdered, and which her 
brother had failed to find, set sail for Af¬ 
rica, accompanied by many faithful follow¬ 
ers. In Africa, Dido bargained for as much 
land as a bull’s hide would cover, but cut 
the hide into the narrowest strips and 
claimed as much land as these strips could 
be made to surround. Here she built the 
citadel of Byrsa, around which the city of 
Carthage grew up. About to be forced into 


a marriage with Hiarbas, the Numidian 
king, Dido caused a funeral pile to be erect¬ 
ed upon which she stabbed herself. From 
that time, she was worshiped as patron¬ 
ess of the city of Carthage. 

Virgil, in the fourth book of the Aeneid, 
tells a different story of Dido’s death. He 
represents Aeneas as landing on the African 
coast. Dido receives him in most friendly 
fashion. He is her guest for some months, 
and seems content to remain, since both a 
kingdom and a bride are offered him. He 
is destined, however, for a different fate. 
Jupiter sends Mercury to bid him resume 
his journey. Aeneas obeys. Dido is bro¬ 
ken-hearted and seeks death as the only 
solace for her unrequited love. Virgil has 
handled this romantic story in so masterly 
a fashion that it has become one of the 
most famous stories in all literature. For 
the character of Dido, Virgil was indebted 
doubtless to Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt. 
The incidents connected with her life and 
death were fresh in all minds at the time 
this part of the Aeneid was written, and 
had doubtless made a deep impression. In 
the sixth book of the Aeneid, Aengas visits 
the infernal regions, and there beholds the 
“unhappy Dido.” He weeps at her sad fate, 
calls the gods to witness that he did not 
voluntarily desert her, and begs a farewell 
word. But Dido passes on, insensible alike 
to his tears and his pleading. 

Many of the ancient critics believed Vir¬ 
gil to have committed an anachronism in 
representing Aeneas and Dido as contem¬ 
porary. Dido’s founding of Carthage was 
placed from fifty to one hundred years ear¬ 
lier than the founding of Rome. That 
Dido is called Elissa by Virgil and others, 
is due doubtless to a confusion of two dis¬ 
tinct personages. The name Dido was in 
reality the surname of the Phoenician As- 
tarte, goddess of the moon, who was also 
goddess of the citadel of Carthage. Elis¬ 
sa or Elisa was the Tyrian foundress of 
Troy. She was confounded with the god¬ 
dess Dido and came to be called Dido. 
The story of Dido has been told by Chau¬ 
cer in his Legend of Good Women and by 
Tasso in Jerusalem Delivered. Both of 
these authors have followed Virgil closely. 
One of Marlowe’s tragedies is Dido, Queen 
of Carthage. Dido Building Carthage is 


DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER—DIFFUSION 


the subject of a famous painting by Tur¬ 
ner, now in the National gallery at Lon¬ 
don. 

See Aeneid ; Virgil. 

Diedrich Knickerbocker, the name 
over which Washington Irving wrote Knick¬ 
erbocker’s History of New York, published 
in 1809. See Irving, Washington. 

Dies Irae, di'ez Tre, or day of wrath, 
an impressive Latin hymn sung at funeral 
exercises or at requiem mass. It was writ¬ 
ten by a Franciscan monk about 1250; at 
least it appeared at Venice at about that 
date. The first two stanzas are as follows: 

Dies irae, dies ilia 
Solvet saeclum in favilla, 

Teste David cum Sibylla. 

Quantus tremor est futurus, 

Quando Judex est venturus, 

Cuncta stricte discussurus ! 

The entire hymn consists of seventeen 
three-line stanzas and a final stanza of four 
lines. Its effect, when sung by a choir be¬ 
neath the vaulted roof of a cathedral to 
the rich accompaniment of an organ, is 
said to be peculiarly solemn and thrilling. 
Numerous translations have been made—• 
one by General John A. Dix. 

Diet. See Food. 

Diet, a national assembly. The word is 
considered a derivation of the Latin dies, 
a day, having reference to a legislative as¬ 
sembly called to meet on a fixed day. Diet, 
therefore, is a general term like congress, 
parliament, convention, legislature. 
v The most noted diet was the great coun¬ 
cil of lords called by the emperor of Ger¬ 
many. The various sessions were known by 
the city in which they were held. The 
Diets of Worms were held in 1495 and 
1521. The latter diet was the one, it may 
be remembered, before which Luther was 
summoned. The Diet of Augsburg met in 
1530. The imperial diets consisted origi¬ 
nally of nobles, but, during the fourteenth 
century, representatives of the free cities 
were admitted. The diets named above 
sat in three colleges: (1) the electoral 

princes; (2) the princes, temporal and 
spiritual; and (3) representatives from the 
imperial cities. The colleges deliberated 
separately. An agreement of all three was 
necessary before a measure might be pre¬ 
sented to the emperor for his approval. 


The term is now little used. The diet 
of Switzerland, established in 1803 by Na¬ 
poleon was superseded in 1848 b} the Fed¬ 
eral Assembly, consisting of two houses, the 
Council of the States and the National 
Council. The Diet of Denmark, consisting 
of two houses, the Landsthing, or upper 
house, and the Folkething, or lower house, 
is known more frequently as the Rigsdag. 
The Diet of Sweden consisted formerly of - 
four chambers or estates,—nobles, clergy, 
citizens, and peasants. In 1866 this diet 
was replaced by a modern parliament, still 
known, however, as the Diet. The Diet 
of Norway is known as the Storthing. The 
Diet of the modern German Empire con¬ 
sists of the Bundesrath and the Reichstag. 
There is no word to include both houses. 

Dietectics. See Food. 

Diffraction, a term used in physics to 
denote the spreading out of light waves af¬ 
ter passing an obstacle or after going 
through a small opening. As a result of 
the interference of the secondary wavelets, 
fringes of color appear. Should you put 
Iudia ink on a plate of glass, draw on it 
with a sharp needle a series of parallel 
lines as close together as possible, you 
would see several bands of prismatic colors. 
Glass plates scratched with fine lines, many 
thousands to the inch, called diffraction 
gratings, are used in producing the best 
spectra. Viewing the light as reflected 
from their surfaces rather than transmitted, 
gives the same result. The iridescent colors 
from pearl or a peacock’s feathers are a 
phenomenon of diffraction. 

Diffusion, the slow mixing of two sub¬ 
stances when brought into contact. It is 
most noticeable in gases and liquids though 
intermixture, to some extent, takes place in 
solids. If a vessel containing hydrogen is 
placed mouth downward over one filled 
with chlorine thirty-five times as heavy, 
they will mix until uniform in composition 
throughout. A little heavy sulphuric acid 
at the bottom of a vessel of water will slow¬ 
ly distribute itself all through the water. 
Blocks of lead and gold in contact will 
diffuse slightly. Diffusion is explained 
from the kinetic theory of matter, though 
the question of adhesion determines whether 
certain substances will mix or not. 


DIGESTION—DIME 


Digestion. See Alimentary Canal; 
Food. 

Digger Indians, a name given to sev¬ 
eral western tribes of Indians, chiefly Sho- 
shonean, extending from Idaho to Califor¬ 
nia. The name was applied in particular 
to the Bannocks and Piutes. As contrasted 
with Indians of the chase and Indians of 
agricultural habits, the Diggers live 
largely by digging and eating roots. The 
camass root in particular was a source of 
food. Pine nuts, lizards, almost any veg¬ 
etable or animal food, seem to be accept¬ 
able to the Diggers. 

Among all these Indians the most miserable 
are the root-diggers, who live almost entirely on 
the scanty roots of plants which are found in the 
ravines or plains. These poor wretches suffer all 
the hardships of hunger and want. They are 
compelled to spend two-thirds of the year among 
the mountains, with no other resource than a little 
fish and roots. When both these provisions fail, 
it is impossible to picture the wretched state of 
these pariahs of the wilderness. Yet they are 
not downcast; they are ever cheerful, and endure 
their suffering with dignity. They are open and 
sociable with strangers and perfectly honest in 
their transactions.—Abbe Domenect. 

Among the choice delicacies with which the 
California Digger Indians regale themselves dur¬ 
ing the summer season is the grasshopper roast. 
Having been an eye-witness to the preparation 
and discussion of one of their feasts of grass¬ 
hoppers, we can describe it truthfully. There are 
districts of California, as well as portions of the 
plains between the Sierra Nevada and the Rocky 
Mountains, that literally swarm with grasshop¬ 
pers, and in such astonishing numbers that a man 
cannot put his foot to the ground, while walking 
there, without crushing great numbers. 

To the Indian they are a great delicacy, and 
are caught and cooked in the following manner: 
A piece of ground is sought where they most 
abound, in the center of which an excavation is 
made, large and deep enough to prevent the in¬ 
sect from hopping out when once in. The entire 
party of Diggers, old and young, male and female, 
then surround as much of the adjoining grounds 
as they can, and each, with a green bough in 
hand, whipping and thrashing on every side, grad¬ 
ually approach the center, driving the insects 
before them in countless multitudes, till at last 
all, or nearly all, are secured in the pit. 

In the meantime smaller excavations are made, 
answering the purpose of ovens, in which fires 
are kindled and kept up till the surrounding 
earth, for a short distance, becomes sufficiently 
heated, together with a flat stone, large enough 
to cover the oven. The grasshoppers are now 
taken in coarse bags and, after being thoroughly 
soaked in salt water for a few moments, are 
emptied into the oven and closed in. Ten or 
fifteen minutes suffice to roast them, when they 


are taken out and eaten without further prepara¬ 
tion, and with much apparent relish, or, as is 
sometimes the case, reduced to powder and made 
into soup. And having from curiosity tasted, 
not of the soup, but of the roast, really, if one 
could divest himself of the idea of eating an in¬ 
sect as we do an oyster or shrimp, without other 
preparation than simply roasting, they would not 
be considered very bad eating, even by more re¬ 
fined epicures than the Digger Indians .—Birds 
and Nature. 

Digitalis. See Fox Glove. 

Dilemma, in logic, a choice between two 
unwelcome conclusions. The two conclu¬ 
sions are called the horns of the dilemma. 
The following illustration, borrowed from 
Chambers, will perhaps convey a clearer 
idea than any definition. “If this man 
were wise, he would not speak irreverently 
of Scripture in jest; and if he were good, 
he would not do so in earnest; but he does 
it, either in jest or earnest; therefore, he is 
either not wise, or not good.” The term 
is applied also, but less correctly, to a state 
of affairs in which one is uncertain which 
of two courses to pursue. A politician, for 
instance, who fears to vote for high li¬ 
cense lest he offend the saloon element, and 
who fears to vote against high license lest 
he lose the support of the anti-saloon ele¬ 
ment, is said to be in a dilemma. Which¬ 
ever way he turns he is likely to be gored. 
See Scylla and Charybdis. 

Dill, a common garden plant of the car¬ 
rot family. Dill is a native of Spain, but 
is widely diffused throughout regions hav¬ 
ing temperate climates. It is an aromatic 
herb akin to caraway. The seed is much 
used in Germany to season pickles, and in 
England to impart a flavor to gin. It has 
also a medicinal value somewhat like that 
of peppermint, especially in case of colic. 

Dime, a United States silver coin, being 
equivalent to ten cents, or one-tenth of a 
dollar. The term is a contraction of the 
French dixieme, meaning the tenth. The 
first American dime was coined in 1796. 
The dime has been in continuous circula¬ 
tion, except when displaced by paper mon¬ 
ey, ever since. Though of less value, the 
American dime corresponds to the English 
sixpence. “Take care of the dimes, and the 
dollars will take care of themselves,” is 
a thrifty American proverb. A well worn 
couplet runs: 


DIMINUTIVE—DIOGENES 


Dimes and dollars, dollars and dimes, 

An empty pocket is the worst of crimes. 

Diminutive, in grammar, a word de¬ 
rived from another to express a little thing 
of the same kind. The diminutive is 
formed usually by the addition of a sylla¬ 
ble, called a diminutive-ending, as et, ette, 
let, kin, ling, ock, in, ie, ille, ule, etc. Thus 
we have: 

Babykin, a young baby. 

Rivulet, a small river. 

Peterkin, little Peter. 

Floret, a tiny flower. 

Storiette, a short story. 

Molecule, a small mole or mass. 

Hillock, a low hill. 

Duckling, a young duck. 

Dimity, a sheer, fine cotton dress 
fabric, characterized by tiny raised cords 
running warpwise of the web. Dimity is 
usually finished white, but both colored 
and printed dimities are on the market. 
The name is'supposed to have been de¬ 
rived from Greek words signifying two- 
threaded, and to have been applied to 
stuffs showing two warp threads or cords 
thrown into relief on the surface of 
the goods. The original materials were 
silk and wool. At present, the name is 
used exclusively for cotton fabrics. A 
heavy, corded cotton fabric dyed in plain 
colors and printed, used for furniture cov¬ 
ering, drapery, etc., is likewise called 
dimity. 

Dinornis, dl-nor'nis, a gigantic bird of 
the ostrich kind. The term is Greek, mean¬ 
ing terrible bird. Our descriptions are 
based on the skeletons found in the 
swamps of New Zealand or buried in sand 
on the seashore. The species is thought 
to have become extinct in the eighteenth 
century. The largest of these birds stood 
from ten to fourteen feet high. They were 
incapable of flight. The bones are strong 
and solid like those of a quadruped. The 
thigh bones were stouter than those of 
a horse. It had three toes. From a sin¬ 
gle bone brought home by a scientific ex¬ 
pedition Professor Owen of England made 
a drawing of this bird so successfully that 
subsequent finds have not made it nec¬ 
essary to change his description materially. 
A very fair skeleton is preserved in the 
Museum of Natural History in New York 
Central Park. See Ostrich. 


Diocese, di'6-ses, the district and 
people falling under the care of a bishop. 
The term is a political one. It was bor¬ 
rowed from the Romans by the early 
Christian church. In the day of Constan¬ 
tine the empire was divided into thirteen 
political dioceses, each comprising several 
provinces. Thus Italy was a single dio¬ 
cese. The ecclesiastical diocese is a small¬ 
er division. The diocese of John Carroll 
of Baltimore, the first American bishop, 
appointed in 1790, included the thirteen 
American colonies. 

Diogenes, dl-oj'e-nes (412-323 B. C.), 
a Greek philosopher. He was a native 
of Sinope, Asia Minor. He traveled to 
Athens and became a cynic. He and his 
father were accused of tampering with 
gold coins and were expelled from the 
city. Of all his belongings, he kept only 
his cloak, purse, and a wooden bowl, de¬ 
claring that the more a man had, the 
greater were his wants. Seeing a boy 
drink from the hollow of his hand, he 
even threw away his bowl. He lived in 
an empty cask, still spoken of as Diogenes’ 
tub. As this circumstance is spoken of 
by satirists, rather than by historians, it is 
regarded sometimes as untrue. On one oc¬ 
casion Diogenes was seen walking through 
the streets of Athens with a lantern in 
broad daylight. On being asked what he 
was looking for, he replied, “I am seek¬ 
ing an honest man.” On a trip to Aegina he 
was captured by pirates and carried to 
Crete. On being offered for sale as a slave 
he proclaimed that someone needing a mas¬ 
ter should buy him. He was purchased by a 
wealthy merchant of Corinth, who appears 
to have enjoyed his eccentricities, and to 
have retained him much as a medieval 
prince kept a jester. On one occasion 
Alexander the Great is said to have asked 
Diogenes what he could do for him. Di¬ 
ogenes replied that the only favor he 
could grant was not to stand between him 
and the sun. Alexander was so impressed 
with the cynic’s content that he exclaimed, 
“If I were not Alexander, I would be Di¬ 
ogenes.” A story runs to the effect that, 
Plato having defined man to be a two- 
legged animal without feathers, Diogenes 
plucked a cock, and bringing him into 
the school, said, “Here is Plato’s man.” 


DIONYSIUS—DIPLOMATIC SERVICE 


Whereupon Plato deemed it well to add to 
his definition the words, “with broad, flat 
nails.” 

Dionysius, dl-o-nish'i-us (431 or 430- 
367 B. C.), the tyrant of Syracuse. 
Originally a clerk, he succeeded in having 
himself appointed to a military command, 
which he managed in such a way as to 
make himself absolute master of the city. 
He was a ruler of ability, maintaining 
himself against the Carthaginians with 
skill. He made Syracuse an important 
commercial factor in the Mediterranean 
Sea and subdued his neighbors on the ad¬ 
jacent coasts of Italy. He aimed also to 
attract attention in the Olympian games, 
and contended several times for the prize 
for tragedy at Athens, winning third and 
even second, but never first place. He is 
remembered for the construction of a state 
prison in the form of a whispering gal¬ 
lery. It was known as the Ear of Dionys¬ 
ius. By placing himself at the end of 
a tube leading from the cell, he was able 
to overhear the slightest whispers of his 
prisoners as they conversed. In this way, 
he sought to keep himself informed of the 
plots and stratagems that surround a king, 
especially one who has seized authority by 
force of arms. Among the whims of this 
monarch was a stand carrying as many 
lamps as there are days in the year. See 
Damon and Pythias; Damocles; Syra¬ 
cuse. 

Dioscuri. See Castor and Pollux. 

Diphtheria, dif-the'ri-a (Greek, mean¬ 
ing leather), an infectious disease. Diph¬ 
theria is a bacterial growth on the mucous 1 
membrane of the throat and elsewhere. It 
spreads somewhat like a mold over the sur¬ 
face, forming a false, furry membrane, 
whence the name. The bacterium or mi¬ 
croscopic plant which produces the dis¬ 
ease . is called the bacillus of diphtheria. 
A person, particularly a child, with a sore 
throat, is most likely to catch the disease; 
but it proceeds invariably from one who 
already has it. The germs of diphtheria 
lie in one’s system from two to seven days 
before they breed in sufficient numbers to 

attract attention. Care should be taken 

/ 

lest patients with diphtheria communicate 
the bacillus to others. Ordinary breath¬ 
ing does not dislodge the germs, but a 


cough is likely to send them out in a fine 
spray. The patient should be kept apart 
from other members of the family; cloth¬ 
ing should be burned, and all other arti¬ 
cles should be thoroughly cleaned with a 
disinfectant. Lest germs be imbibed, 
physicians object to having school children 
drink from the same cup, or wipe on the 
same towel. The bacillus of diphtheria 
does less damage itself than is done by 
a poisonous principle it makes, called diph¬ 
theritic toxin. Scientists have succeeded in 
discovering a remedy which, injected into 
the veins of the patient, neutralizes this 
toxin, and is called therefore antitoxin. 
Treatment with the antitoxin not only de¬ 
stroys diphtheria, but .renders a patient 
proof against its recurrence for some time. 
Having had the disease once is no guarantee, 
however, that it will not renew its attacks 
repeatedly. There is some hope that, by 
administering this antitoxin at intervals, 
children may be protected against diph¬ 
theria. The annual number of deaths from 
diphtheria in the United States is not far 
from 20,000. See Disease. 

Diploma, a Greek word meaning two¬ 
fold. A diploma was originally a writing 
on two tablets of wax, fastened face to 
face, and later on a sheet of parchment 
or paper, folded double. The Roman 
courier was given a diploma conferring 
authority to use the public horses and em¬ 
ployes to hasten his journey. In later 
times, a diploma was conferred by an in¬ 
stitute of learning on a physician or law¬ 
yer, authorizing him to practice his pro¬ 
fession. The college diploma is more in 
the nature of a certificate that the bearer 
has completed a course of study. Of late, 
perhaps unfortunately, the term has been 
applied to certificates of graduation issued 
by high schools, academic schools, business 
colleges, and the like. The United States 
is the greatest diploma-granting country in 
the world. There is seemingly no restric¬ 
tion or sense of propriety in the use of the 
term. 

Diplomatic Service, that branch of 
government service which guards the inter¬ 
ests, other than commercial, of a govern¬ 
ment in its relations with other govern¬ 
ments. For centuries the European nations 
quarreled among themselves about the 


DIPPER—DISCOUNT 


place the representative of each country 
should take at a foreign court, each nation 
demanding precedence of the others. At 
last a congress at Geneva in 1815 and one 
at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818 divided these 
representatives into four grades of rank; 
these are given below. Today all countries 
sending representatives of the same class, 
say ambassadors, have equal rank, and their 
ambassadors take their places at social af¬ 
fairs, audiences with the sovereign, pro¬ 
cessions, and the like, in the alphabetical 
order of the countries they represent. 

1. In the highest group are ambassa¬ 
dors ordinary, extraordinary, and plenipo¬ 
tentiary. The duties and privileges of am¬ 
bassadors are treated fully in an article 
under that head. Such a representative is 
ambassador ordinary if he resides perma¬ 
nently at a foreign court, and extraordi¬ 
nary if sent on a special occasion. The 
word plenipotentiary means having full 
power. An ambassador plenipotentiary, 
then, is an ambassador extraordinary whose 
letters to the foreign court give him full 
power to conclude his special business, 
whether it be to negotiate a treaty, conclude 
peace, or what not. 

2. The group second in rank includes 
envoys extraordinary and ministers plenipo¬ 
tentiary, and special commissioners. An 
envoy extraordinary and minister plenipo¬ 
tentiary is usually, strange to say, a perma¬ 
nent resident, as the representative of his 
government in a country less important 
than one to which is sent an ambassador. A 
special commissioner is a person sent on 
particular business but lower in rank than 
an ambassador extraordinary. 

3. The position of minister resident is 
still less important. The United States 
sends such representatives only to the small 
countries of Liberia and the Dominican Re¬ 
public. 

4. A charge d’affaires is a man, usually 
the secretary of the legation, left in charge 
of a legation in the absence of a higher 
representative. 

This classification has been adopted by 

the United States only since 1893, and all 

members of the service are often spoken of 

still as “ministers,” so that there is much 

confusion in the use of the term. The 
» 


question as to what rank of representative 
should be sent to a foreign country is set¬ 
tled easily by sending to every country one 
with the same title as has that country’s 
representative to us. All foreign diplomatic 
representatives are appointed by the presi¬ 
dent with the consent of the Senate. See 
Ambassador; Consul. 

Dipper, a bird which dips, dives, or 
ducks under water. See Ouzel. 

Dirce, der'se, in Greek legend, the sec¬ 
ond wife of Lycus. See Farnese Bull. 

Disciples of Christ, or Christians, a 
religious denomination often called “Camp- 
bellites,” from their founder, Alexander 
Campbell of Bethany, Virginia. In 1812 
he renounced the Presbyterian faith and 
became identified with the Baptists. In 
1823 he began the strong advocacy of a 
simple gospel without emphasis upon the 
doctrines which led to the many creeds of 
the day. The Bible alone was to be the 
all-sufficient authority in religious life. A 
Presbyterian minister in Kentucky named 
Stone had earlier organized a church along 
these same lines and these two movements, 
now grown to some proportions, united in 
1831. The denomination experienced a 
steady growth particularly in the Ohio 
Valley till in 1913 they were reported to 
have 9,076 churches and 1,362,71 1 com¬ 
municants. They have organized and main¬ 
tain 24 schools and colleges, among them 
being the well known Drake University of 
Des Moines, Iowa. 

Direct Legislation. See Initiative 

and Referendum; Recall. 

Dis. See Pluto. 

Discount, in general a deduction made 
for any reason from a debt, a price, or an 
account. In a more specific sense discount 
is a charge made by a banker for advanc¬ 
ing money on a bill or note not yet due, 
the amount of discount charged being equal 
to interest on the face of the note for the 
length of time between the date of payment 
£uid the date on which the note becomes 
due. The banker deducts this amount from 
the face value of the note, pays the re¬ 
mainder, or proceeds, as it is called, to the 
individual presenting the document and 
reimburses himself by collecting the note 
when it becomes due. 


DISEASE—DISESTABLISHMENT 


Disease, diz-ez', a serious disorder of 
the system. The literal meaning of the 
term is want of ease, uneasiness, distress. 
The term is difficult to define. A bruise, 
a burn, drinking lye, taking poison, the ac¬ 
tion of certain chemicals, all cause want 
of ease—pain; but their action, however 
fatal, is not termed a disease. A cold, a 
headache, hunger, overeating, overheating, 
or indigestion may cause distress and even 
death, but are hardly called diseases. 

A very large group of infectious dis¬ 
eases may be described not inappropriately 
as an attack made by minute plant and ani¬ 
mal forms on the living cells of the whole 
or a part of the body. Two scientific dis¬ 
coveries have laid a foundation for the un¬ 
derstanding of this class of diseases. 
First, that the human body, as well as all 
animals and plants, is made up of cells. 
Secondly, that exceedingly small plants 
and animals of many kinds, known vari¬ 
ously as molds, bacteria, and protozoa, en¬ 
ter the body, multiply rapidly, attach 
themselves to the cells, absorb their sus¬ 
tenance, and destroy them. This state¬ 
ment is true not only for man but for the 
lower animals and for plants as well. 
These destroying, disease-causing pests are 
parasites. They feed on living cells and 
on the corpuscles of the blood. A colony 
of one particular bacterium or plant feed¬ 
ing on the lungs produces tuberculosis or 
consumption; another kind spreads over 
the throat like a mold, causing diphtheria. 
Typhoid fever, pneumonia, cholera, lock¬ 
jaw, cancer, influenza, erysipelas, the 
plague, and glanders are due each to its 
specific bacterium or parasitic plant 
growth. Other diseases again are due to 
attacks of low microscopic, parasitic ani¬ 
mals. Malaria and many skin diseases are 
of this sort. Sometimes the cells of the 
body are destroyed by the organism direct; 
sometimes a poison is manufactured which 
kills the cells. None of these plants or 
animals can do harm unless they gain 
entrance to the body. Many of these can 
do no harm unless they find the body weak 
or injured. Diphtheria, for instance, finds 
ready lodgment in a raw “cold throat.” 
Tuberculosis is powerless unless it finds 
weak lungs. Improper food and impure 
water are two prolific sources of disease. 


Preventive medicine consists in keeping 
the body in health and strength to resist 
the attacks of germs and in providing pure 
air, food, and water that the germs may 
not enter the system. 

Disestablishment, in modern politics, 
the separation of church and state, or, to be 
particular, the withdrawal of state support 
from a church that has long enjoyed an in¬ 
come from public taxation. It is not in¬ 
accurate to say that an established church 
is characteristic of states having a domi¬ 
nant religious body. In Mohammedan 
countries mosques are maintained at public 
expense. In Russia the Greek Orthodox 
church is supported by the state. Catho¬ 
lic countries, usually, but not always, main¬ 
tain a state church. France, Brazil, and 
Mexico may be named as notable excep¬ 
tions. The Lutheran states of North Eu¬ 
rope support the Lutheran religion. Scot¬ 
land maintains the United Presbyterians, 
largely at public expense, and leaves other 
denominations to provide for their own 
support. England takes care of an es¬ 
tablished church, the Protestant Episcopal, 
or Church of England, in similar fashion. 
The established church of England is also 
the established church of Wales, although 
the majority of the people belong to other 
churches. There are no established 
churches in North America, save in some 
of the small states south of Mexico. There 
are no established churches in New Zea¬ 
land or in the Commonwealth of Australia. 
The Catholic church was disestablished in 
Brazil in 1889, in France in 1905. 

A fight for the disestablishment of the 
Protestant Episcopal church in Ireland is 
one of the longest parliamentary contests 
on record. Although the population of 
Ireland was overwhelmingly Catholic, the 
English authorities divided the island into 
parishes, and forced the populace to pay 
of their poverty for the support of a 
Church of England clergy. After centuries 
of occupation the Church of England, or 
the Established Church of Ireland, as it 
was known officially, included but thirteen 
per cent of the population in its fold. 
This Irish Church, which was never Irish, 
was disestablished by act of Parliament in 
1869, when William Gladstone was prime 
minister. 


DISINFECTANT—DISPENSARY SYSTEM 


Disinfectant, a substance or an agent 
relied upon to kill or render powerless the 
microbes and germs which produce dis¬ 
eases. The reader may consult the articles 
on Bacterium and Disease for some no¬ 
tion of the relation the former bear to the 
latter. A disinfectant is sometimes called a 
germicide. The best disinfectants or germ 
killers of all are sunlight and air. Most 
germs wither and die in bright light and 
pure air. Heat is a germ killer. Suffi¬ 
cient heat in any form—dry, boiling, 
steaming, or burning—kills microbes. 
Freezing kills many germs, but the typhoid 
bacillus lives for months in solid ice. 
Among chemical germ killers the best 
general agent is chloride of lime. It is 
not expensive. Three pounds of chloride 
to eight gallons of water makes a solu¬ 
tion that kills all common germs. Com¬ 
mon whitewash is excellent. Corrosive 
sublimate highly diluted in say 1,000 
parts of water is a certain but unpleasant 
and even dangerous disinfectant. Carbol¬ 
ic acid, in the proportion of a fourth of a 
pound to a gallon of water, is efficient in 
most cases. Fumes of burning sulphur are 
exceedingly disagreeable. They spoil the 
appearance of furniture and are not re¬ 
garded as efficient. Formaldehyde gas is 
the disinfecting agency used by health of¬ 
ficers in fumigating rooms and houses to 
cleanse them from germs of contagious 
disease. See Drugs; Disease; Bacte¬ 
rium. 

Dismal Swamp, one of a series of 
swamps on the Atlantic coast. The great 
Dismal Swamp proper is about ten miles 
wide and thirty long. It crosses the bor¬ 
der line between Virginia and North Caro¬ 
lina. Drummond’s Lake, a body of wa¬ 
ter about seven miles long, lies in its 
midst. A large part of the swamp was 
covered formerly with cypress forests, 
through which refugees waded knee-deep 
in water, running a chance of being bit¬ 
ten by venomous moccasin snakes at every 
step. Before the Civil War it was a place 
of refuge for escaped slaves. They made 
small clearings on dry bits of land sur¬ 
rounded by impassable jungles. They 
lived on provisions obtained from the 
neighboring plantations, and on half wild 
hogs, game, berries, garden truck, and 


fish. A picture of a settlement of this 
sort is given by Mrs. Stowe in her Dred. 
The surface of the Dismal Swamp is raised 
above the adjacent country by an accu¬ 
mulation of moss and decaying timber. 
Of late extensive ditches have been dug 
and a large part of the swamp converted 
into fertile, agricultural land. A north 
and south canal has been constructed by 
the national government at the expense 
of $1,000,000 to enable ships to make a 
short cut and avoid the storms met in 
rounding Cape Hatteras. 

Dispensary System, in liquor legisla¬ 
tion, .the sale of intoxicants by city or 
state. In 1893 the state of South Caro¬ 
lina decided to take over the sale of 
liquors. Saloonkeepers were given six 
months’ notice to get out of business. The 
state dispensaries opened for business July, 
1, 1893. Among the features of the sys¬ 
tem are: 

1. Sale by salaried officials. Under this 

method of compensation attendants 
have no financial purpose in increas¬ 
ing sales. 

2. Liquors of known and guaranteed 

quality are sold. It is claimed that 
adulterated liquors are particularly 
harmful in effect. 

3. Liquors are sold only between sunrise 

and sunset. This to put a stop to mid¬ 
night carousing. 

4. Liquors are sold only for cash. A 

workingman cannot drink up his wages 
in advance. 

5. Liquors are sold only in sealed packages 

holding not less than one-half pint 
and not to exceed one and seven- 
eighths gallons. 

6. No liquor may be drunk on the prem¬ 

ises. 

Among the gains growing out of the 
dispensary system in actual operation, its 
advocates point out: the absence of sa¬ 
loons and public loafing places; a de¬ 
crease in the number of persons directly 
interested in the sale of liquors; the re¬ 
moval of glamour by putting liquor on the 
same basis as groceries or pickles; a marked 
decrease in the consumption of liquors, 
and an actual revenue to the state of $500,- 
000 a year. When the last census was 
taken there were 534 retail dealers and 


DISPERSION—DISTAFF 


13 wholesale dealers in South Carolina. 
The recognized agencies of the state were 
146 retailers and 12 wholesalers. This 
means that 1 wholesale house and 388 
“blind pigs” did business in defiance of 
the law. 

The new system was fought by prohibi¬ 
tionists because it was not total prohibi¬ 
tion ; by the saloon-keepers because it drove 
them out of business; by extreme personal 
liberty people because it forbade engag¬ 
ing in trade; by certain politicians be¬ 
cause it removed one means of controlling 
voters. The law was fought persistently 
at the polls and in the courts and in 
the legislature. In 1906 the state sys¬ 
tem was given over. The several coun¬ 
ties were authorized to maintain county 
dispensaries and shut out saloons. The 
state sells to the county dispensary at a 
profit of six to ten per cent, netting the 
school fund (1907) $125,000 a year. The 
local dispensary is allowed to charge a 
profit of sixteen per cent, which, after de¬ 
ducting expenses, is divided between the 
county and the municipality in which the 
“county saloon” is located. 

See Gothenburg. 

Dispersion, a term used in physics to 
describe the separation of white light in¬ 
to its component parts when it passes 
through a prism. This is explained by the 
fact that light of various wave lengths 
travels at different speeds in the glass and 
thus is refracted so that the colors emerge 
at different places. The red is bent the 
least and the violet the most of the visible 
spectrum, while the others occupy the posi¬ 
tions between. See Color. 

Disraeli, diz-ra'lee, Benjamin 
(1804-1881), an English statesman. He 
was of Jewish ancestry but joined the 
Church of England. He was educated for 
the law but took up the profession of lit¬ 
erature. His first novel was Vivian Gray. 
In 1837 he entered Parliament; in 1852 
he became a member of the cabinet under 
Lord Derby; in 1868 he became prime 
minister—the height of his ambition. He 
was a rival of Gladstone. He stood for 
the interests of the ancient aristocracy 
rather than for those of the people, and 
favored a strong foreign policy; that is 
to say, the acquisition of foreign territory. 


During his long official career he was op¬ 
posed to the extension of the right of vot¬ 
ing; yet, for political reasons, was obliged 
to bring forward one of the most sweep¬ 
ing reform bills. Queen Victoria favored 
Disraeli more than she did Gladstone, yet 
refrained from offensive interference. In 
1876 she created Disraeli a peer with the 
title of Earl of Beaconsfield. He was 
a man of acute intellect and an able speak¬ 
er. He was fond of the primrose. On 
that account it was adopted as a party 
flower to be worn by the Tory women at 
political meetings. Primrose leagues were 
formed among his followers. During his 
busy life, Disraeli wrote a number of nov¬ 
els, including Coningsby, Sybil, Tancred, 
Endymion, and Lothair. They were quite 
popular as political novels, owing to the 
fact that many of the characters were pub¬ 
lic people but thinly disguised. His work 
is not expected, however, to live as litera¬ 
ture. See Gladstone. 

sayings. 

It is much easier to be critical than to be cor¬ 
rect. 

The secret of success is constancy to purpose. 

Man is not the creature of circumstances. Cir¬ 
cumstances are the creatures of men. 

Patience is a necessary ingredient of genius. 

Youth is a blunder; manhood is a struggle; 
old age a regret. 

To be conscious that you are ignorant is a 
great step to knowledge. 

His Christianity was muscular. 

The world is a wheel, and it will all come 
round right. 

Nurture your minds with great thoughts. To 
believe in the heroic makes heroes. 

Pie is intoxicated with the exuberance of his 
own verbosity. 

SAID OF DISRAELI. 

Lord Beaconsfield was one of the most re¬ 
markable men of the nineteenth century. If not 
possessed of actual genius he was endowed with 
great intellectual power, and he had astonishing 
tenacity of purpose and showed remarkable tact 
and ability in managing men. 

Entirely original, and never echoing any other 
writer.—Nicoll. 

Disraeli’s popularity as a novelist is, doubtless, 
to a great extent due to his prominence as a 
statesman.—Emery. 

Distaff, dis'taf, in hand spinning, a 
cleft stick about three feet lbng, on which 
was fastened a quantity of wool, cotton, 
or flax, as it came from the cards. The 


DISTILLING—DISTRICT 


lower end of the distaff was" held between 
the spinner’s left arm and side, leaving 
the hands free to draw out some of the 
fibers, twist them into a thread, and wind 
the thread on the spindle. The spindle 
was suspended, or set in a whorl, so ar¬ 
ranged as to revolve like a top, thus aid¬ 
ing in twisting and winding the thread. 
The seventh of January used to be called 
St. Distaff’s day, because at that time wom¬ 
en resumed their ordinary occupations of 
spinning, weaving, etc., after the interrup¬ 
tion of the Christmas festival. See Card¬ 
ing; Spinning. 

Distilling, separating one substance 
from another by evaporation. Nature car¬ 
ries on distillation on a grand scale. The 
heat of the sun causes the water of the 
ocean to rise or evaporate, leaving the salt, 
the iodine, and other substances behind. 
The vapor is cooled in the upper regions, 
and clouds of distilled water are formed. 
If brine be heated in a kettle the vapor 
may be caught in a handful of wool, sup¬ 
ported by a few sticks laid across the top, 
and water thus separated from the salt— 
distilled water—may be squeezed from the 
wool. If we fit a tea kettle with an air¬ 
tight cover, and convey the vapor from 
the spout through a coil of tubing so that 
the steam may cool and trickle drop by 
drop into a cup set to catch it, we have 
a still. If the conducting coil of tubing 
pass through running water to keep it 
cool the three essential features—the re¬ 
tort, the condenser, and the receiver—of a 
modern still are present. If the liquid ob¬ 
tained be not pure it may be redistilled. 
Distilling proceeds on the principle that 
of substances in solution, that is to say, 
in a liquid form, some vaporize or evapo¬ 
rate more readily than others. Alcohol 
vaporizes more readily than water, and 
will rise from a mixture, leaving the water 
behind. If water, salt, and alcohol be 
mixed, water and alcohol together may be 
secured by vigorous heating. A second 
distillation with gentle heat will drive the 
alcohol over the divide, and leave the wa¬ 
ter undisturbed. Sometimes the substance 
left behind is quite as desirable as the 
substance that is distilled. When the flow 
of the Georgia pine is placed in a still 
both products of distillation are desired. 


The oil of the pine, or turpentine, which 
is distilled, and the gum or resin, which 
is left behind, are valuable. 

Distillation was employed by the an¬ 
cients in the preparation of oil from the 
wood of cedar. Whether the alchemists 
of the Middle Ages thought that some 
occult power might lie in animal shapes, 
or whether the animals suggested shapes 
for their retorts, their stills are pictured 
as having the odd forms of a clay ostrich, 
a pelican, a goose, a standing bear, etc. 

Distillation has a wide application in 
modern industry. Many devices are em¬ 
ployed, but all contribute to the three simple 
essentials,—heating, cooling, and catching. 

See Perfumery; Oil; Alcohol. 

District of Columbia, a tract of land 
acquired by the national government as a 
site for the capital. The discomfort of 
having no permanent seat of government 
or territory within which Congress might 
be protected in its deliberations led to the 
passage of an act in 1790 for the selec¬ 
tion of a tract of land on the Potomac. 
A commission of which Washington was 
a member laid out a district ten miles 
square, lying partly in Maryland and part¬ 
ly in Virginia. The two states ceded the 
desired land to the national government. 
In 1846 the portion south of the river 
was receded to Virginia. The present ter¬ 
ritory is a trifle less than seventy square 
miles in extent, nearly ten miles of which 
are swamp and water. Congress met in the 
new district on the first Monday in No¬ 
vember, 1800. Various plans of govern¬ 
ing the District have been tried. Under 
act of June, 1878, local affairs were placed 
under the management of a commission 
consisting of two members appointed by the 
president and confirmed by the Senate and 
of one army officer detailed by the secre¬ 
tary of war. Congress may be regarded 
as the city council. One-half the expenses 
of the district is paid by Congress; the 
other half is met by local taxation. Na¬ 
tional property is, of course, exempt from 
taxation. No elections are held in the dis¬ 
trict. Citizens live in the district without 
losing their legal residence in the various 
states, and may return home to vote. The 
population in 1910 was 331,069. See 
Washington. 


DIVI-DIVI—DIX 


Divi-Divi, de-ve'-de-ve', the pods of a 
legume-bearing tree of the West Indies and 
South America. The tree is related to Bra¬ 
zil wood. The pods are about an inch wide 
and three inches long. They are thin and 
curl up. The color of the best is a golden 
brown. Divi-divi pods are astringent. 
They are rich in tannin. They are em¬ 
ployed for tanning leather. The tariff on 
divi-divi has been the subject of more or 
less sport on the floors of Congress, but the 
article is duty free. One hundred thirty- 
four thousand pounds were imported in 
1908. The value of importations for the 
decade ending 1909 was about $85,000. 

Divination, the art of foretelling the 
future by means of signs and omens. It 
was resorted to among *the ancients before 
any important step was taken. The 
Greeks consulted the oracle at Delphi. The 
#augur, or foreteller of events, was a pub¬ 
lic official of the Romans. He understood 
how to interpret the flight of birds, the 
movements of clouds, the behavior of 
smoke, and particularly how to interpret 
the future from the intestines of animals 
offered up for sacrifice. No Roman be¬ 
gan a journey or engaged in an important 
enterprise without first inquiring whether 
the signs were favorable. 

A curious practice prevailed of opening 
the works of Virgil in the hope that a pas¬ 
sage thus selected by chance might contain 
some useful hint or bit of advice for the 
future. A parallel practice of consulting 
the Bible by opening it with a pin may be 
mentioned. The custom was followed un¬ 
til of late, at least, in New England, in 
a half serious, half sportive way, some¬ 
times with a ludicrous result; as in the case 
of the woman who is said to have sought 
advice as to whether to turn her dress 
or to dye it. As it happened she hit upon 
the words, “Turn ye, turn ye, . . . for why 
will ye die?” in Ezekiel xxxiii: 11. In 
Enoch Arden, it may be remembered, Ten¬ 
nyson describes Annie as turning to the 
Scriptures for an intimation of whether 
her long absent husband was yet living. 

Traces of the old custom of divination 
linger. There are still those who believe 
that a branching rod of witch-hazel may be 
used to locate underground reservoirs of 
water. Palmistry, or the study of the. 


creases in the palm of the hand, affords 
at least amusement for the parlor. Many 
believe in dreams. Fortune-telling and the 
study of grounds in a teacup must be in¬ 
cluded here. 

See Astrology; Witch-Hazel; Del¬ 
phi ; Palmistry. 

Diving, the art of plunging beneath the 
surface of water and remaining for a time. 
Many diving birds rely upon this method 
of securing food and of escaping their 
enemies. The loon, the cormorant, and the 
penguin are good examples. The otter, 
seal, and whale are skillful divers, and can 
remain under water for a considerable 
length of time. Many diving bugs carry 
down bubbles of air beneath their wing 
covers. A person does well to remain un¬ 
der water eighty seconds. The most skill¬ 
ful divers are perhaps the pearl and sponge 
fishers of the Mediterranean and East In¬ 
dies. Divers who require to work under 
water laying and repairing water mains, 
examining or raising wrecks, and the like, 
usually wear a diving armor or diver’s suit. 
It is water proof throughout. The head 
is surrounded by a large hollow helmet 
with a glass front. A force pump in the 
boat above and a flexible tube are relied 
upon to supply fresh air. A signal cord 
enables the diver to send word above when 
he desires to be drawn up. The latest 
improvements consist of a steel reservoir 
of air lashed to the diver’s back from which 
he breathes air from a tube. Another con¬ 
trivance is the diving bell. It is shaped 
like an inverted water pail. It is tall 
enough for a man to stand within on a 
crosspiece. It sinks of its own weight, 
imprisoning and carrying down air enough 
to support the workman for some time. 
A diving bell is considered a more clumsy, 
and is certainly a less portable device, than 
the diving suit. It may be supplied with 
fresh air as in the case of the diving 
suit. A diver’s armor or suit is worth 
up to $500, and weighs 170 pounds. See 
Swimming. 

Dix, Dorothea Lynde (1802-1887), 
an American teacher, writer, and philan¬ 
thropist. She was born at Hampton, 
Maine, and died at Trenton, New Jer¬ 
sey. Miss Dix is one of the most useful 
women America has produced.. She taught. 


DIX—DIXIE 


school in Worcester and in Boston. In 
1830 she fell heir to property that enabled 
her to devote her life to the unfortunate. 
In 1834 Miss Dix went abroad to study 
English and European methods of caring 
for criminals, lunatics, and paupers. She 
was urgent in advocacy of hospitals, of 
clean and well-kept poorhouses, of insti¬ 
tutions for the deaf, dumb, and blind, and 
of orphan asylums. Her greatest work, 
however, lay in the direction of persuading 
lawmakers to provide public asylums for 
the insane. In this work she visited many 
states and addressed legislatures. Over 
thirty insane asylums were established. 
Through her efforts Congress passed a bill 
setting aside 10,000,000 acres of land for 
the maintenance of asylums for pauper 
lunatics, but President Pierce vetoed the 
measure. One result of a trip to Europe 
was the publication in 1845 of Prisons and 
Prison Discipline . She wrote also a num¬ 
ber of books for children. During the 
Civil War Miss Dix superintended the hos¬ 
pital nurses of the Federal service. In 
1903 an effort was made to secure a na¬ 
tional appropriation of $10,000 for the 
erection of a suitable memorial at her 
birthplace. The chairman of the Congres¬ 
sional committee wrote, “Miss Dix oc¬ 
cupies a conspicuous place in history as 
a philanthropist. Certainly no other wom¬ 
an in modern times has done more to earn 
the gratitude of the people of this coun¬ 
try than this self-sacrificing and devoted 
woman.” 

Dix, Gen. John A. (1798-1879), 
an American soldier and statesman. A 
native of New Hampshire. He was about 
to enter West Point when the secretary of 
war, needing troops for the War of 1812, 
offered him an ensign’s commission. He 
acquitted himself creditably at Sackett’s 
Harbor, and at the close of the war re¬ 
mained in military service, rising to the 
rank of major. In 1828 Dix, who com¬ 
bined activity and scholarship in a remark¬ 
able degree, resigned and began the prac¬ 
tice of law at Cooperstown, New York. 
He soon became engaged in state politics, 
and was known as a member of the “Al¬ 
bany Regency,” a handful of able and 
honest Democrats who controlled New 

York politics. It is difficult to pass by 
11-27 


his eminent services as a state office-holder 
and legislator. He was active in the es¬ 
tablishment of normal schools, promoted 
the natural history survey of New York, 
and became identified with large financial 
interests. His name was a synonym for 
honesty. On the discovery of gigantic 
frauds in the New York postoffice, Dix 
was persuaded to accept the postmaster¬ 
ship long enough to restore public confi¬ 
dence. During the closing year of Buchan¬ 
an’s administration Dix was president of 
the Rock Island Railroad. Howell Cobb, 
secretary of the United States treasury, 
abandoned his post and went over to the 
Confederacy. Money was needed; finan¬ 
cial ruin threatened the government. Wall 
street bankers offered to loan money if 
they might suggest a treasurer in whose 
ability, loyalty, and integrity they had con¬ 
fidence. Dix was the man, all parties con¬ 
curred. As secretary of the treasury he 
had charge of the United States revenue 
cutters, and, hearing that the commander 
of a cutter off New Orleans was acting 
suspiciously, Dix sent orders for his arrest, 
adding the words that have made him fa¬ 
mous, “If any one attempts to haul down 
the American flag, shoot him on the spot.” 
During the Civil War Dix rendered skill¬ 
ful military service, rising to the rank of 
major general. He became governor of 
New York and minister to France. His 
character may be summed up in the words, 
honor, ability, and intense patriotism. 

Dixie, the Southern States. The origin 
of the term is involved in dispute. Some 
hold that it is derived from the term, 
Mason and Dixon’s line, that divided the 
slave from the free states. Others claim that 
the name sprang from a certain Dixie, a 
large slaveholder of Manhattan Island. 
He permitted his servants to enjoy life so 
well that Dixie or Dixie’s became a tra¬ 
ditional term in negro minstrelsy for a sort 
of earthly paradise. 

Dixie, a famous song of the Southland. 
Dixie was composed by Daniel C. Emmett, 
known familiarly as Dan Emmett. Mr. 
Emmett told the story of this stirring song 
as follows: 

The original title of my “Dixie” song was “I 
Wish I Was in Dixie’s Land.” It was written, 
or, rather, finished, when I was a member of 


DIXON—DOBSON 


Dan Bryant’s minstrels, then located at Mechanics’ 
Hall, 470 Broadway, New York City. I went with 
Bryant in ’59, and “Dixie” was written a 
year later, but not on a rainy Sunday, as is gen¬ 
erally supposed and certain Boswells have seen 
fit to put it. The idea for “Dixie” was conceived 
long before my joining Bryant. “I wish I was in 
Dixie” was a circus expression that I heard up 
North while traveling with canvas shows. In 
those days, all below the Mason and Dixon line 
was considered South, and it was a common oc¬ 
currence, of a cold day, when traveling through 
the North, to hear a shivering circus man remark, 
“I wish I was in Dixie’s land.” “Dixie” never 
impressed me as being as good a song as “Old 
Dan Tucker,” which was one of my first composi¬ 
tions, but “Dixie” caught on from the first, and 
before I knew it, it had taken the country by 
storm. We kept “Dixie” on for six seasons. I 
always look upon the song as an accident. One 
Saturday night, Dan Bryant requested me to write 
a walk-around for the following week. The time 
allotted me was unreasonably short, but, notwith¬ 
standing, I went to my hotel and tried to think 
out something suitable, but my thinking apparatus 
was dormant; then, rather than disappoint Bryant, 
I searched through my trunk and resurrected the 
manuscript of “I Wish I Was in Dixie’s Land,” 
which I had written years before. I changed the 
tempo and rewrote some of the verses, and in all 
likelihood, if Dan Bryant had not made that 
hurry-up request “Dixie” never would have been 
brought out. 

I wish I was in de land ob cotton, 

Old time dar am not forgotten. 

Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie 
Land. 

In Dixie Land whar I was born in, 

Early on one frosty mornin’, 

Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie 
Land. 

Den I wish I was in Dixie, 

Hooray! Hooray! 

In Dixie Land, I’ll take my stand. 

To lib an’ die in Dixie, 

Away! Away! 

Away down South in Dixie 
Away! Away! 

Away down South in Dixie. 

Old missus marry Will de weaber, 

William was a gay deceaber, 

Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie 
Land. 

But when he put his arm around ’er 
He smiled as fierce as forty pounder, 

Look away, etc. 

His face was sharp as a butcher’s cleaber, 

But dat did not seem to greab her,— 

Look away, etc. 

Old missus acted de foolish part 

And died for a man dat broke her heart,— 

Look away, etc. 

Now here’s a health to the next old missus. 

And all de gals dat want to kiss us,— 

Look away, etc. 


But if you want to drive ’way sorrow 
Come and hear dis song to-morrow,— 

Look away, etc. 

Dar’s buckwheat cakes and Injun batter 
Make you fat or a little fatter, 

Look away, etc. 

Den hoe it down and scratch your grabble 
To Dixie Land I’m bound to trabble 

Look away, etc. 

Dixon, dik'son, George, an English 

navigator. He was an officer on the Reso¬ 
lution during Cook’s last voyage. Later 
he was sent out on an independent explor¬ 
ing expedition and discovered the Queen 
Charlotte Islands. He was the author of A 
Voyage Round the World, published in 
1789. He died about 1800. See Cook, 
James. 

Dobson, the larva of the corydalis, 
a large insect allied to the ant-lion. The 
eggs of the corydalis are attached to ob¬ 
jects overhanging a stream. As soon as 
hatched the larvae enter swiftly running 
water and hide under stones for nearly 
three years before they pupate and go 
ashore to become flying insects. The lar¬ 
vae attain a length of two inches, and are 
an excellent bait, especially for bass. An¬ 
glers call them “dobsons,” and look for 
them under stones where the water is 
swiftest. The adult insect has long feelers 
and a wing expanse of five inches. 

Dobson, Henry Austin (1840-), an 
English poet. He was born at Plymouth, 
England. In 1856 he became a clerk in 
the Board of Trade, and later one of the 
officials known as principals. His earliest 
verses were published in St. Paid’s maga¬ 
zine, and later in book form under the 
title Vignettes in Rhyme, and Vers de So- 
ciete. Proverbs in Porcelain, Old World 
Idylls, and At the Sign of the Lyre are 
other volumes of poetry. Dobson has al- . 
so produced prose works, among them the 
Lives of Fielding, Hogarth, Goldsmith, 
and Walpole. Dobson is probably the . 
best and most popular author of that class 
of poetry called “Society verse,” much in 
vogue during the latter part of the nine¬ 
teenth century. “Society verse,” of whose 
French name, (e Vers de Societe,” the Eng¬ 
lish translation is a poor equivalent, is 
marked, Stedman tells us, “by humor, by 
spontaneity, joined with elegance of fin- 


DOCK—DOCK STRIKE 


ish, by the quality we call breeding—above 
all, by lightness of touch.” Dobson’s 
verses display these characteristics to a 
marked degree. He also makes admirable 
use of the French forms, rondeau, rondel, 
and triolet, in many beautiful little poems. 

Dock, a sour-juiced herb allied to rhu¬ 
barb and buckwheat, as may be noted by 
the shape of the seed. Another ally is the 
sheep sorrel (not wood sorrel) of run-out 
fields. The leaves of the various kinds 
differ greatly in shape, but their margins 
are curly. Boys find a dock leaf, well 
rubbed in, a convenient remedy for the 
sting of a nettle. Decoctions of dock root 
are of value in medicine. The water dock, 
with its large leaves and acrid root, was 
held in reverence by the Druids. 

Dock, a nautical term. It may refer 
to a deep-water wharf with facilities for 
loading and unloading large ships. A dry 
dock is an inclosure in which ships may 
be repaired. A ship enters dock by means 
of a doorway; it is then propped in an 
upright position; the water is allowed to 
run out at low tide, or else it is pumped 
out of the inclosure, in order that work¬ 
men may reach the hull to make repairs. 
A dry dock is requisite to the business of 
repairing ships. There are a number of 
docks on the Atlantic coast. The 
more important are located at Portland, 
Portsmouth, Charleston, Brooklyn, Eliza¬ 
beth, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Balti¬ 
more, Newport News, Norfolk, New 
Orleans, and Port Royal. Montreal has 
large new docks. On the Pacific coast 
there are dry docks at San Francisco and 
Port Orchard. That at Mare Island, near 
San Francisco, is 739 feet long. It is 
built of granite, and admits ships drawing 
thirty feet of water. A large number of 
docks are located also on the Great Lakes, 
as at West Superior, Marquette, Milwau¬ 
kee, Chicago, Port Fluron, Toledo, Cleve¬ 
land, and Buffalo. Many of these docks 
are of great size, several hundred feet in 
length. The British government and ship 
owners maintain docks, we may say, all 
over the world, for the repair of ships car¬ 
rying the British flag. There are docks at 
Gibraltar, Malta, Halifax, Bermuda, Cape 
of Good Hope, and Plong Kong. A dry 


dock at Hamburg is capable of raising a 
load of 35,500 tons. 

The floating dock used for smaller ves¬ 
sels is practically a submerged raft, or 
jacket, into which a ship fits itself and is 
braced firmly in position. The water in 
large reservoirs is then replaced by air, 
causing the dock to rise and float, lifting 
the ship up out of the water. 

Dock Strike of London, The, a not¬ 
able strike of unskilled workmen in 1888. 
East London, the region of the great docks, 
is the residence of many thousand labor¬ 
ers engaged in loading and unloading car¬ 
goes, and in other river-side employments. 
For centuries this district was noted for 
sodden drunkenness and indifference to 
progress. When a dock wanted laborers 
the gate swung open, and when enough 
laborers had poured in the gate was closed. 
Just previous to the year named some de¬ 
gree of success was attained in uniting the 
men in trade unions. August twelfth a 
strike was called. The Union demanded 
a working day of at least four hours, the 
abolition of piece work and contract work, 
and a wage of not less than twelve cents 
an hour. This stand for not less than 
forty-eight cents a day on which to support 
a family in London shows the condition 
of the dock laborers. The companies re¬ 
fused. John Burns put himself at the 
head of the strikers. In ten days’ time 
150,000 men—porters, coal heavers, seamen, 
firemen, carmen, bargemen—were under 
control, and business was at a standstill 
along ten miles of the busiest riverside 
in the world. Daily mass meetings were 
held at Tower Hill, and daily the strikers 
marched to the heart of the city in a solid 
body, half as large as the entire population 
of the state of Delaware. The leaders 
worked night and day to feed the strikers 
and their families. The press took up the 
cause. Clergymen preached from their 
pulpits. • Contributions poured in from 
workingmen and wealthy men. Old Eng¬ 
land and New England, the Old World 
and the New, sent in money and supplies. 
One million dollars passed through the 
treasury of the committee. A belated contri¬ 
bution from far off Australia, coming when 
enthusiasm was ebbing, and supplies were 


DODDER—DODGE 


falling off, stayed the hands of the leaders 
and rendered success possible. The dock 
companies defied public sentiment for five 
weeks, but finally agreed to the demands of 
the strikers. The London Dock Strike 
won, and John Burns became a member of 
the English cabinet. See Burns, John. 

Dodder, a peculiar relative of the morn¬ 
ing glory. There are some fifty kinds, all 
leafless, worthless plants that look like 
pale, unhealthy runners of a strawberry. 
The flowers are in fleshy green clusters. 
The characteristic of the dodder is parasit¬ 
ism. The dodder drops its seed in the 
ground, where it takes root and sends up 
a tendril-like shoot that fastens itself by 
suckers to the stem of some other plant. 
It sends in rootlets to suck the sap and 
lives on its host, dying away at the ground 
entirely. There are many common dodders 
—all agricultural pests—as clover dodder, 
flax dodder, hop dodder, etc. Often dod¬ 
der is a tangled mass of green and yellow 
threads. A search in a tangled patch of 
weeds, sunflowers, and the like is likely to 
reveal the presence of dodder. The vines 
have no leaves and need none. The work 
done by leaves is done for them by the 
leaves of the host plant. See Parasite; 
Fungi. 

Dodge, Mary Abigail (1838-1896), 
an American writer, better known by her 
pen name of “Gail Hamilton.” She was 
born at Hamilton, Massachusetts. For 
some years she taught in the high school 
at Hartford, Connecticut. She was one 
of the editors of Our Young Folks from 
1865-67. Besides numerous contributions 
to current literature, Gail Hamilton was 
the author of Gala Days, Twelve Miles 
from a Lemon, Biography of James G. 
Blaine, Country Living and Country 
Thinking, and several other books. She 
was a widely known and much respected 
writer of current literature. Her style 
was vigorous, clear, and pleasing. She 
had a keen sense of humor, and took a 
deep interest in affairs which concerned 
the welfare of the country. She was well 
known among literary people. The story 
goes that in war times she sent Whittier a 
pair of slippers in facetious allusion to the 
well known fact that Whittier’s sympa¬ 


thies with the North in the struggle were 
somewhat at variance with his Quaker 
principles. Each slipper was embroidered 
with a bristling war eagle with thunder¬ 
bolts clutched in his claws, but the colors 
were sober, Quaker gray. Gail Hamilton’s 
writings are little read at the present time. 

Dodge, Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Mapes 
(1831-1905), an American editor and 
writer. For over thirty years she was the 
recognized leader in juvenile literature in 
America. She was the second daughter of 
Professor James J. Mapes. New York 
City was her birthplace, and she received 
a careful education at home under the di¬ 
rection of governesses and tutors. She 
married William Dodge, whose early death 
left her, while still a young woman, with 
two boys to care for and educate. Mrs. 
Dodge had always been fond of reading 
and writing; but it was only when she 
wished to earn money for the education of 
the boys that she turned her attention 
seriously to writing. She was successful 
at once, her contributions- to various maga¬ 
zines receiving a hearty welcome. Her 
first published volume was Irvington 
Stories. Her most notable book is Hans 
Brinker, a story of child life in Holland. 
For this story, Mrs. Dodge “ransacked 
libraries, public and private, for books 
upon Holland; made every traveler whom 
she knew tell her his tale of that unique 
country; and submitted every chapter to 
the test of the criticism of two accom¬ 
plished Hollanders living near her. It 
was the genius of patience and toil, the 
conscientious touching and retouching of 
the true artist, which wrought the seem¬ 
ingly spontaneous and simple task.” The 
story has passed through many editions 
both in England and America, and has 
been translated into French, German, Ital¬ 
ian, Dutch, and Russian. 

In 1870 Mrs. Dodge accepted the posi¬ 
tion of associate editor of Hearth and 
Home, and in 1873 became editor of 
a new magazine for boys and girls, St. 
Nicholas. To undertake this work, Mrs. 
Dodge gave up some cherished dreams of 
her own of becoming a novelist. Convinced 
that many could write for older people, 
while few had so clear a “call” to the field 


DODGSON—DOG 


of juvenile literature, she entered heart 
and soul into the work; and from its first 
issue in November, 1873, until her death, 
made St. Nicholas what she said it should 
be, a “place where children may come and 
go as they please, where they are not obliged 
to mind, or say ‘Yes, ma’am,’ and ‘Yes, sir,’ 
—where, in short, they can live a brand 
new, free life of their own for a little 
while, accepting acquaintances as they 
choose and turning their backs without 
ceremony upon what does not concern 
them.” 

Besides Hans Brinker, other books by 
Mrs. Dodge are Donald and Dorothy, 
Theophilus and Others, and a volume of 
poems, Along the Way. 

Dodgson, Charles Lutwidge (1832- 
1898), an English clergyman. Mr. Dodg¬ 
son was a distinguished mathematician and 
the author of several treatises on mathe¬ 
matical subjects. Over the pseudonym of 
Lewis Carroll, he wrote stories for chil¬ 
dren, which have made him famous. The 
earliest of these was Alice in Wonderland, 
followed by Through the Looking Glass, 
The Hunting of the Snark, and Sylvie and 
Bruno. It is said that, when Alice in Won¬ 
derland was published first, Queen Victo¬ 
ria read it with great delight. She was so 
pleased that she sent out immediately for 
all of Mr. Dodgson’s previous works, and 
found that they dealt with logarithms and 
the higher calculus. 

Lewis Carroll has proffered a merry antidote 
to the hyperaesthetic and other fads of the day. 
His Rhyme and Reason contains “Phantasma¬ 
goria” and “The Hunting of the Snark,”—bright 
audacities in which the fancy that created Alice 
in Wonderland plays without tether and affords 
delight to the healthy and fun-loving mind.— 
Stedman. 

Dodo, an extinct bird of Mauritius. 
Accounts by Portuguese and Dutch navi¬ 
gators testify that it survived as late as 
1681. Further accounts go to show that it 
and other animals peculiar to the island 
were destroyed by the numerous descend¬ 
ants of some hogs turned loose by sailors. 
No complete specimen of the dodo is 
known. A few scrappy bits of the bird, 
a foot here and a head there, have been 
supplemented by a number of bones found 
of late in a marsh, in Mauritius, from which 


a tolerably complete skeleton has been 
made up for the British Museum. The 
dodo had short, ill set legs, a clumsy, 
globular body, possibly twice as large as 
that of a goose, an enormous mouth, and 
a large bill terminating in a hook. It was 
heavily feathered with ashen gray plumage, 
but was practically wingless and had a 
short upcurled tail. In spite of its awk¬ 
ward build, naturalists classify it with the 
pigeon and the dove. A black, heavily 
built, hawk-bill pigeon of the Island of 
Samoa, called the tooth-billed pigeon, 
from notches in its bill, is considered the 
nearest living relative of the dodo. The 
island is not large, and this pigeon is likely 
to become extinct. 

Dog, a well known animal related to 
the wolf, fox, and jackal. The origin of 
the dog is not known. Even after making 
allowance for the influence of domestica¬ 
tion it is difficult to believe that a poodle 
and a bulldog are descended from a com¬ 
mon ancestor. Several wild dogs are evi¬ 
dently closely related to the domestic dog 
and the wolf. The dog is by nature an 
animal of the chase. It has a keen scent, a 
good eye, is hardy, swift, and is adapted to 
a meat diet. 

Several groups are of interest. The 
spaniel, the retriever, and the setter are 
soft, long haired water dogs. The latter 
derives its name from a habit of crouching 
when it desires to indicate the presence of 
game. The poodle, a homely, hairy lap- 
dog, full of tricks and easily taught to 
retrieve or fetch game, does not seem out 
of place in this group. The noble New¬ 
foundland dog has a love of water and 
a habit of fetching and carrying, 'suggest¬ 
ing a strain of spaniel ailcestry. 

Hounds hunt by sense of sight. The 
greyhound is the swiftest dog. It has been 
introduced in the West for jackrabbit 
coursing. The whippet is an English dog 
employed for hare hunting. The stag- 
hound and the deerhound were used for 
deer hunting. The Irish wolfhound and the 
great Dane are magnificent, large wolf 
dogs. The pointer is a hound, with an 
acquired disposition to stand in a rigor, 
pointing to game which it has located in 
cover by the sense of smell. The blood- 


DOG 


hound is a dignified dog with large, wrin¬ 
kled chops and pendulous ears. It was 
much used to trace runaway slaves and is 
still employed to pursue criminals, find 
lost children, or the like. If a shoe or 
garment of the desired fugitive, or an au¬ 
thentic footprint, can be shown this intelli¬ 
gent animal, it will sniff the article until 
it has the scent. It then courses round and 
round until it finds the trail of the fugi¬ 
tive, which it recognizes by the mere scent, 
even when a day or two old; then it sets 
off baying on the trail which it will follow 
for days. It is useless for a fugitive to 
walk fences, double back on his path, 
climb trees, pass through a herd of cattle, 
or step in the tracks of another person. 
The only way to throw a bloodhound off 
is to wade in water, and, even then, the 
dog will course up and down the shores 
for miles searching for the lost trail. In 
spite of his persistence, the bloodhound is 
not ferocious, but stands and bays at his 
game until his master comes up. 

The St. Bernard of the old Swiss mon¬ 
astery is noted for having rescued many 
travelers from death in the snowstorms of 
the famous pass in which the monastery 
is situated. 

The mastiff is a most massive, respect¬ 
able type of dog. The bulldog is noted 
for loyalty and fighting qualities. The 
reader will recall Bill Sykes and his dog 
in Oliver Twist. The terrier is the most 
incorruptible, irrepressible watch dog in 
the whole dog family. 

The collie or sheep dog is the most in¬ 
telligent and valuable dog of the present 
day. The feats performed by the shep¬ 
herd dog, as it is frequently called, are 
almost human in their ingenuity. The 
least that a Scotch collie will do is to 
chase up on the hillside and bring the sheep 
down to the shearer one by one as fast as 
they are wanted and no faster. When the 
sheep are penned for the night, he is on 
hand as anxious as can be while the count 
is going on, and at the least sign that any 
are wanting, he is off to the hills after the 
strays. Oliphant’s Bob, Son of Battle, is 
the finest dog story in print and is compar¬ 
able with Black Beauty, the horse story. It 
does the collie simple justice. 


Judging from literature the standing of 
the dog is better than it used to be. The 
standing of the dog in the Scriptures is 
crystallized in the query of Hazael, “Is 
thy servant a dog that he should do this 
thing?” In explanation it may be said 
that the oriental dog as seen in Jerusa¬ 
lem, Damascus, Bagdad, and other cities 
of the East, is a miserable slinking cur, in¬ 
festing the streets and living chiefly on 
offal. 

Beginning with the fable of the selfish 
dog in the manger, that would not allow 
the hungry ox to eat hay, we find many 
sayings and proverbs indicative of long 
companionship between everyday people 
and the dog,—not on the whole compli¬ 
mentary to the dog. “Idle dogs worry 
sheep,” say the Scotch. “He that lies 
down with dogs must arise with fleas,” 
contains more truth than poetry. “Hun¬ 
gry dogs eat dirty puddings,” hints of 
necessity that knows no law. “A hair of 
the dog that bit you,” said to be a cure for 
the bite of a mad dog, finds its parallel 
in the similia similibus curantur or like 
cures like of homeopathy and the doc¬ 
trine of vaccination. “Help a lame dog 
over a stile,” says the mendicant. “The 
gude dog doesna aye get the best bone,” 
is the doctrine of the canny Scot again. 
“Better a live dog than a dead lion,” is 
the refuge of the fainthearted. “Give a 
dog a bad name and hang him,” and “Any 
stick will do to beat a dog with,” are the 
pleas of the lawyer for the defense. 

Although Shakespeare does advise that 
we “Throw physic to the dogs,” as though 
the dog were the lower stratum of domes¬ 
ticity, modern literature shows that the 
dog has risen in popular estimation. 
Mountainous regions and the prairies and 
forests of the New World, with all the 
features of hunting, camping, and cabin 
life, have developed higher characteristics. 
Stories of the great St. Bernard rescuing 
snow-belated travelers, of Newfoundlands 
plunging in to save drowning children, of 
hounds placing themselves between the 
cradle and fierce beasts, of watch dogs 
guarding their master’s property with their 
lives, and of dogs lying on their masters’ 
graves refusing to be comforted, are nu- 



1 Hound 
Setter 


2 Bloodhound 3 Pointer 4 Irish Setter 5 English 
6-7-8 Short Haired, Wire Haired and Long Haired Setters 

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English Greyhound 2 Russian Greyhound 
English Foxhound 5 Fox Terrier 
7 Dachshund—Rough Haired 


3 Scotch Greyhound 
6 Dachshund—Smooth Haired 
8 Black Field Spaniel 


DOGS 
















DOG-DAYS—DOLDRUMS 


merous and bear testimony to one of the 
most faithful servants and persistent ad¬ 
herents of man. 

For a further account, the reader is re¬ 
ferred to the chapter on the dog in Dar¬ 
win’s Animals and Plants under Domesti¬ 
cation. 

See Eskimo; Alaska; Wolf; Fox. 
Dog-Days. See Sirius. 

Dog-Fish, a general name applied to nu¬ 
merous species of fishes resembling small 
sharks. They are eighteen inches to eight 
feet long. They follow up schools of cod, 
herring, and mackerel, and other food fish¬ 
es in hungry packs, whence their name. 
Fishermen dread them for the mischief 
they do, breaking nets, cutting lines, but 
chiefly driving away the schools of fish. 
The sea may be alive with mackerel and 
the fishermen reaping a harvest, when the 
back fins of a pack of dog-fish are seen cut¬ 
ting the water and all is over. The fish 
have gone elsewhere and must be sought 
anew. 

Dog-Star. See Sirius. 

Dogbane, a genus of perennial herbs. 
There are two species in the eastern part 
of the United States. Both have upright 
branching stems, opposite leaves, fibrous 
bark, and a milky juice. The spreading 
dogbane has delicate, open, bell-shaped 
flowers of a pale rose color, distributed in 
spreading clusters. The roots are used as 
an emetic. The other species has pale, 
erect, less open flowers crowded in close 
clusters. Its tough, stringy bark was used 
by the natives for making nets, whence the 
name, Indian hemp. The dogbanes be¬ 
long to a large family of over a thousand 
species, including many Old World shrubs, 
vines, and trees. A number of species 
yield India rubber of commerce. The 
milktree and the cream-fruit of Africa, the 
periwinkle, and the cape jasmine are of 
the family. 

Dogberry, an absurd night-constable in 
Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. 
Dogberry is ignorant, self-satisfied, and 
over-bearing, but talkative and good na- 
tured. See Much Ado About Nothing. 

Doge, doj, the chief magistrate of Ven¬ 
ice. The term is derived from the Latin 
dux, and corresponds to duke. The duties of 


the doge were akin to those of mayor, ex¬ 
cept that he held his position for life and 
exercised nearly absolute power. The doge 
of Venice not infrequently declared war 
or made peace entirely on his own motion. 
He rewarded his friends, imprisoned and 
executed his enemies almost as absolutely 
as the Sultan of Turkey. The term is first 
heard of about the year 697. The dignity 
was extinguished by the army of the 
French Revolutionists in 1797. The term 
was similarly used, though for a shorter 
time, in the city of Genoa. See Venice; 
Bridge of Sighs. 

Dogwood, a family of flowering shrubs 
or trees. The common dogwood of Europe 
appears to be of value—its wood for char¬ 
coal, its berries for oil. There are several 
American dogwoods; they are as often call¬ 
ed cornel. Two are quite showy in flower. 
The inconspicuous flowers are in a close 
head surrounded by a whorl of showy 
white leaves that one would naturally, sup¬ 
pose to be the petals of the flower itself. 
One of these showy cornels is a dwarf 
about six inches high which in June car¬ 
pets the low grounds of the Northern 
woods with white. A cluster of red berries 
follows later. The other showy cornel is 
the flowering dogwood of upland forests 
from Ontario to Texas. The leaves that 
surround the flower cluster are white, 
broad, heartshaped at the apex and open up 
three or four inches across. They are fol¬ 
lowed by handsome clusters of red berries 
that add brilliancy to the foliage of au¬ 
tumn. The other cornels are hard to tell 
apart. They bear flat clusters of white 
flowers. The purple bark of the Kinni- 
kinic was much used by the Northern In¬ 
dians as a substitute for smoking tobacco. 
The bright red-purple shrubs of another 
kind give it the name of red osier dog¬ 
wood. 

Doldrums, a term applied by seamen to 
the zone of calms near the equator where 
for weeks at a time there is not enough 
wind to move their sailing vessels. It is 
probable that the term originated in some 
way from the word dull. To be thus be¬ 
calmed in this region was often a serious 
matter, especially if food or water was 
scarce. The monotony was occasionally 


DOLL—DOLLY VARDEN 


broken by sudden, violent squalls, another 
source of danger, but which were insufficient 
to carry the vessel into the trade-wind belt. 

The word doldrums has acquired a per¬ 
sonal significance; one of sullen moods, 
especially if marked by occasional bursts of 
temper, is said to be in the doldrums. 

Doll, a toy made to imitate, usually, a 
child, but sometimes a grown person. The 
name is believed to have been derived from 
Dolly, an abbreviation of Dorothy. A 
love of dolls is universal. Children of ev¬ 
ery hue and nation delight in fondling 
dolls. The Eskimo child makes a doll out 
of a bit of bone or ivory, dressing it pos¬ 
sibly in fur. The child of the African 
jungles gowns a bit of stick with forest 
leaves.* The wooden dolls with painted 
faces and inexpensive clothing are made 
for the most part in Thuringia, and in cer¬ 
tain sections of France and Germany. The 
most expensive dolls are made in France. 

Doll making is an important industry 
in London and New York. Dolls are made 
of almost every conceivable material. The 
famous molded wax dolls of France have 
glass eyes, stuffed bodies, flaxen ringlets, 
and fancy dresses. The heads, hands, and 
feet are sewed usually to a body of cloth 
or kid, stuffed with bran, sawdust, cork, 
meal, or even cotton. Unbreakable dolls 
are now made from celluloid. The entire 
body, or only the heads, hands, and feet 
may be made from this material, which dif¬ 
fers little in appearance from bisque. Many 
dolls are made in one piece, of rubber; 
others have porcelain heads and limbs. 
Other materials are papier-mache and plas¬ 
ter of paris, painted to represent the com¬ 
plexion, hair, and features. 

For dressing small dolls, makers pur¬ 
chase remnants at millinery establishments. 
Children seem, however, to care little for 
the expensiveness of a doll. A rag baby, 
worth a few cents, is often loved as tender¬ 
ly as an expensive combination of wax and 
silks. Nearly all children are partial, how¬ 
ever, to dolls that shut their eyes when laid 
down. This effect is secured by means of 
movable eyes, furnished with wires and 
weights in such a way that when the doll is 
placed on its back the weight drops down, 
and the eye turns over bringing the lid 


into view. When the doll is lifted up, the 
weight takes a new position, causing the eye 
to open. A doll having a flexible, hollow 
body, as rubber, may be made to cry by 
means of a whistle set in the mouth. Edi¬ 
son amused himself constructing a doll 
with a phonograph in its interior. When 
its machinery is wound up, the doll laughs, 
cries, talks, and sings in a surprisingly nat¬ 
ural fashion. All said and done, however, 
the simplest dolls give quite as much pleas¬ 
ure as those of more ingenious construction. 

See Automaton; Toy. 

Dollar, an old German coin first minted 
from Bohemian silver in 1519 at Joachims- 
thal. The Joachimsthaler or thaler, for 
short, whence dollar, was for a time the 
European standard of weight and purity. 
The name was adopted by Spain and its 
colonies. Through trade with the West 
Indies, American merchants were more fa¬ 
miliar with the Spanish dollar than with 
the English pound. Accordingly, when the 
American congress in 1792 established a 
system of coinage for the United States, 
the basis was made a dollar “of the value 
of a Spanish milled dollar, the same as is 
now current.” The first actual American 
silver dollar, 1794, weighed 416 grains, 
and contained 371.25 grains of silver. The 
gold dollar contained 24.75 grains of fine 
gold at first, which was reduced in 1834 
to 23.20 grains, and again raised in 1837 
to 23.22 grains at which it now remains. 
The silver dollar has gone through sever¬ 
al changes of weight. It now weighs 412.5 
grains, 371.25 grains of which are silver. 
Since March 14, 1900, the gold dollar has 
been the standard of value in the United 
States. An English pound is worth $4.86 
in gold; the silver bullion in a silver dol¬ 
lar is worth about 45 cents in gold. The 
dollar is the unit of coinage in the United 
States, British North America, Newfound¬ 
land, Liberia, and Mexico. See Coin; 
Mint. 

Dolly Varden, the coquettish but warm¬ 
hearted daughter of Gabriel Varden in 
Dickens’ Bar naby Rudge. In the begin¬ 
ning of the story she is described as a 
“pretty, laughing girl; dimpled and fresh 
and healthful—the very impersonation of 
good humor and blooming beauty.” After 



Dolmen on Laaland, Denmark. 


























DOLMEN—DOLPHIN 


an interval of five years, she comes again 
upon the scene: “When and where was 
there ever such a plump, roguish, comely, 
bright-eyed, enticing, bewitching, captivat¬ 
ing, maddening little puss in all this world 
as Dolly? . . . This same Dolly Varden, 
so whimsical and hard to please that she 
was Dolly Varden still, all smiles and dim¬ 
ples, and pleasant looks, and caring no 
more for the fifty or sixty young fellows 
who at that very moment were breaking 
their hearts to marry her, than if so many 
oysters had been crossed in love and opened 
afterwards.” Dolly wears a cherry color¬ 
ed mantle and cherry colored ribbons. Her 
attire is always dainty and bewitching and 
gay. With no real descriptions of her 
costumes the author so frequently alludes 
to their attractiveness that the name, “Dol¬ 
ly Varden,” has ever since been in use. 
In the early seventies a popular style of 
costume was named the Dolly Varden. A 
pointed bodice and a light muslin skirt, 
printed with gay flowers and tucked up 
over a petticoat of solid color, were the 
distinguishing features of the Dolly Var¬ 
den gown. Dimity or other dainty fabrics 
of delicate color besprinkled with bright 
flowers are often called Dolly Varden pat¬ 
terns. 

Dolmen, a rude structure consisting 
usually of several standing stones capped 
by a flat stone. The name is from Brittany, 
meaning stone table. The deck or covering 
is ordinarily a single stone. A remarkable 
dolmen near Saumur, France, is 64 feet 
long, .14 feet wide, and 6 feet high. It is 
rectangular in shape. There are four pil¬ 
lars on each side, one at the middle of each 
end; and the deck is formed by four enor¬ 
mous slabs. The cover of a notable dol¬ 
men in Cornwall is a single stone 33 feet 
long. It is thought to weigh 750 tons. It 
rests on two stones. Dolmens are found 
throughout Great Britain and Ireland, 
France, Algeria, Denmark, Norway, Swe¬ 
den, eastern Palestine, and India. It is 
uncertain whether the dolmen was a sacri¬ 
ficial table or a place of burial. It seems 
to shade off into the burial mound formed 
by heaping earth over the structure and 
into the underground stone chamber form¬ 
ed by excavating and lining with stones. 


The dolmen is inclosed not infrequently 
by a circle of standing stones. See Bar- 
row; Stonehenge; Carnac. 

Dolomite, a common rock composed of 
the carbonates of calcium and magnesium 
in varying proportions. The former alone 
is limestone, or when crystallized, marble, 
either of which the mixture may resemble, 
though more grayish or yellowish in color. 
The finer varieties are sometimes called 
marble. It is widely distributed, being 
found in England, Italy, and in the eastern 
part of the United States, where it is ex¬ 
tensively used as building stone. 

Dolphin, dol'fin, an open sea animal. 
It is not a fish. It belongs to a family 
of land animals that have lived in the sea 
so long that they are not fit to be out of 
it. It is warm-blooded, it suckles its 
young, and breathes air. Both jaws are 
well filled with teeth. It feeds chiefly on 
fish. At times the dolphin annoys the 
herring fishers. It has many of the char¬ 
acteristics of the seal, but is more closely 
related to the whale, and still more so to 
the porpoise. There are many species—* 
at least twelve in American waters. The 
common dolphin is an inhabitant of the 
Mediterranean and the temperate parts of 
the Atlantic. It is about six feet'long, 
black above, and white beneath. It has a 
narrow nose and a long pair of jaws. Be¬ 
cause of this the French call the dolphin 
goosebeak and goose of the sea. A single 
nostril is situated on the top of the head. 
The dolphins are noted for graceful move¬ 
ments. They travel in schools. When they 
see a ship a mile or two away they come 
racing through the waves as if glad to see 
someone. They gambol and dive about 
the ship as if to please the passengers with 
their graceful capers. 

In Greek mythology, the dolphin had the 
reputation of becoming familiarly attached 
to man. Apollo is represented as riding 
a dolphin and playing his flute. A thick 
body, tapering toward a fin-shaped tail, the 
suppression of the hind limbs and the re¬ 
duction of the front limbs to fin-like flip¬ 
pers, as well as a fin-like appendage on the 
back, give all the members of the family 
the appearance of a fish. A large open- 
sea fish of the tropics, remarkable for rap- 


DOMBEY—DOMESTIC SCIENCE 


id changes of color when taken out of the 
water, has been confused with the dolphin. 
Byron has fallen into this error: 

Parting day 

Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues 
With a new color, as it gasps away, 

The last still loveliest, till ’tis gone— and all is 
gray. 

See Dauphin; Porpoise. 

Dombey and Son, a novel by Charles 
Dickens published in serial form, beginning 
in October, 1846. It appeared in book form 
in 1848. Mr. Dombey is an aristocratic, 
proud, stern, unfeeling man; his only pas¬ 
sion is a love for his little son Paul, a del¬ 
icate child, who dies young. Florence 
Dombey is unable to win her father’s af¬ 
fection, and is driven finally from home. 
Disappointed in a worldly ambition to per¬ 
petuate the name of the firm; hated by his 
proud and disdainful second wife, and dis¬ 
graced by her elopement; bankrupted by 
venturesome investments, the haughty 
Dombey is at last utterly broken and sub¬ 
dued. Now the neglected daughter re¬ 
turns and devotes herself to making her 
father’s last days a time of peace. As 
usual in Dickens’ stories, there are many 
minor plots and side issues. As usual, too, 
the interest is in the characters, rather than 
in the story. Mr. Dombey, Little Paul, 
Edith Granger, Mrs. Skewton, the Carkers, 
Captain Cuttle, Joey Bagstock, Old Sol 
Gills, and Dr. Blimber are real people 
whom we have seen and known, and who 
cannot be forgotten. Two paragraphs, one 
from the opening, another from the closing 
chapter of Mr. Dombey’s career, give a 
glimpse of his character and of the changes 
wrought therein: 

The earth was made for Dombey and Son to 
trade in, and the sun and moon were made to 
give them light. Rivers and seas were formed to 
float their ships; rainbows gave them promise of 
fair weather; winds blew for or against their 
enterprises; stars and planets circled in their 
orbits, to preserve inviolate a system of which 
they were the center. 

For the night of his worldly ruin there was no 
tomorrow’s sun; for the stain of his domestic 
shame there was no purification ; nothing, thank 
Heaven, could bring his dead child back to life. 
Rut that which he might have made so different 
in all the Past—which might have made the Past 
itself so different, though this he hardly thought 
of now—that which was his own work, that which 


he could so easily have wrought into a blessing, 
and had set himself so steadily for years to form 
into a curse; that was the sharp grief of his 
soul. 

See Dickens, Charles. 

Dome, in architecture, a hollow hemi¬ 
sphere resting on pillars, or a supporting 
wall. The dome grew out of the arch, and 
is regarded as an invention of the Roman 
builders. Some of the noted domes of the 
world are those of the Pantheon and St. 
Peter’s at Rome; St. Paul’s, London; St. 
Sophia at Constantinople; the Hotel des 
Invalides of Paris, under which Napoleon 
lies; Santa Maria at Florence, and that of 
our own National Capitol at Washington. 
Cupola is a synonymous term. The open 
space or hall beneath a dome is called a ro¬ 
tunda. See Capitol; St. Peter’s; St. 
Paul’s. 

Domestic Art in Schools, that branch 
of home economics which includes instruc¬ 
tion in sewing and its allied interests,—in¬ 
struction in practical millinery, in the choos¬ 
ing and testing of textile fabrics, in the use 
and care of sewing machines, and in vari¬ 
ous forms home decoration may be added 
to lessons in plain sewing. The work is 
offered at different periods in the school 
course, more often in the eighth grade and 
the high school. The best courses begin 
with work in the fourth grade. For¬ 
merly sewing was taught by means of sam¬ 
plers, and other articles of no practical 
value. The more satisfactory courses re¬ 
quire practical work. If darning is to be 
the lesson of the day, the girls bring 
articles from home that need darning. The 
little girls learn to make dolls’ clothes, the 
older ones clothing for themselves, many 
courses including the cutting and making 
of a complete set of underclothing, an 
apron, skirt, and shirtwaist. 

Sewing has been introduced far more 
generally than cooking since no additional 
equipment is required and the instruction 
can be given by the regular grade teachers. 
Where the teaching of sewing is successful, 
however, it has proved an entering wedge 
to be followed by a fully equipped course 
in household science. 

Domestic Science in Schools, that 
branch of home economics which deals 


DOMINICAN—DONNELLY 


especially with the practical work of cook¬ 
ing. 

This subject appears in the curriculums 
of our public schools from the third grade 
up. The eighth grade and the high school, 
however, offer the course most commonly. 
The chief difficulty in many cases has been 
a suitable equipment but as the value of 
the course becomes more fully realized, the 
expense will seem proportionately smaller. 
The girls learn to cook meats and vegeta¬ 
bles, to bake bread, biscuits, cakes and 
cookies, to make salads and desserts. They 
learn something of food values, how to 
select foods and arrange bills of fare. By 
actual practice they learn the value of neat¬ 
ness and order, and of systematic manage¬ 
ment in the home. In many schools they 
learn to serve the food they have prepared. 
Sometimes marketing and the keeping of 
household accounts is included. While 
courses in home economics in normal 
schools and colleges fit women to fill teach¬ 
ing and other positions in that line the 
courses offered in secondary schools aim to 
fit students for the practical work of the 
home. In many schools instruction in 
household science is given to boys as well 
as girls, although it is usually optional 
after the high school is reached. 

Dominican Republic. See Haiti. 

Dominicans, an order of preaching fri¬ 
ars. It was founded in the thirteenth cen¬ 
tury by St. Dominic with a view to con¬ 
vert the Albigenses. The order spread 
rapidly in France, Italy, and adjacent 
parts of Germany. The rules of the order 
were founded on those of the Augustinians. 
They were called Black Friars from the 
color of their costumes. A large monas¬ 
tery stood near the east end of the present 
bridge of Blackfriars, London. Forty- 
eight Dominican monasteries were among 
the number suppressed by Henry VIII dur¬ 
ing the time of the English Reformation. 
Like the Jesuits, the Dominicans were 
known for scholarship. Three popes, half 
a hundred cardinals, and over eight hun¬ 
dred bishops have been members of this 
order. In the early days of the order no 
property but alms was permitted; but, as 
the order grew, houses and property became 
needful. 


Dominion of Canada. See Canada. 

Dominoes, a game played with twenty- 
eight flat, oblong pieces of wood, ivory, or 
bone. The face of each piece is divided 
by a line across the middle into two square 
compartments. Each compartment is ei¬ 
ther a blank or contains from one to six 
pits or dots like those of dice. The low¬ 
est domino is a double blank; the highest a 
double six. Each number of dots from 
blank to six occurs on seven different dom¬ 
inoes, and twice on one of them. The 
number five, for instance, occurs opposite 
a six, a five, a four, a three, a two, a one, 
and a blank. The'game is played in vari¬ 
ous ways. Usually the dominoes are shuf¬ 
fled about, spots downward. Each player 
draws a number agreed upon. The highest 
double is then played. The players follow 
in turn, each matching the end of a piece 
that does not join any other. If a four 
and a two are exposed, for instance, the 
player may match either. If he plays a 
two and a six, his successor must then play 
a four or a six. If a player is unable to 
match either end he must draw from the 
table until he succeeds in doing so. The 
player whose pieces are all placed first 
wins by the number of spots still held by 
his opponent or opponents. If neither 
player can match, and the extra dominoes 
have all been drawn, the game is blocked. 
The player having the fewest number of 
spots wins. The game is not without 
arithmetical value for young children. 
Even older persons find recreation in play¬ 
ing it. See Games. 

Donatello, don-a-tel'lo. See Marble 
Faun, The. 

Donkey. See Ass. 

Donnelly, Ignatius (1831-1901), an 
American politician and author. He was 
born in Philadelphia. He was educated 
for the law. In 1857 he removed to Min¬ 
nesota, where he figured in politics for 
many years, representing a district of the 
state in Congress and taking a prominent 
part in the Populist movement. He was 
known as a powerful orator. He was the 
author of a number of works. Atlantis\ 
the Antediluvian World, Ragnarok, Cae¬ 
sar’s Column, and The Great Cryptogram 
are among them. In the latter work, he 


DON QUIXOTE 


attempted to prove that Francis Bacon was 
the real author of Shakespeare’s plays. 

Don Quixote, kwiks'ot, Spanish don 
ke-ho'ta, a novel by Miguel Cervantes. It 
was published in two parts, in 1605 and 
1615 respectively. The book was a bur¬ 
lesque on the popular tales of chivalry. 
The first part met with immediate success. 
Five editions were printed -within a year. 
Cervantes, who regarded Don Quixote as 
of minor importance to his dramas, post¬ 
poned writing the second part for some 
time. When he finally began it he had lost 
interest, and wrote in a half-hearted fash¬ 
ion until some one else published a spuri¬ 
ous second part. This enraged Cervantes, 
and the book was finished forthwith. It 
was never so popular as the earlier part of 
the work, although quite equal to it in 
humor, vivacity, and invention, and sur¬ 
passing it in literary execution. It is said 
that Don Quixote has found more readers 
than almost any other work of fiction. Up 
to 1874, 278 editions had appeared, 81 of 
these in Spain, 191 in other countries. 

To appreciate fully the humor of Don 
Quixote it is needful to know something 
of the region through which the gallant 
Don rode in search of adventure. La 
Mancha is the name of the district, and it 
is the dullest and most unattractive region 
in all Spain. “The landscape of La 
Mancha has the sameness of a desert with¬ 
out its dignity.” The few poor villages are 
utterly lacking in the picturesque and ro¬ 
mantic. Altogether no place could have 
been chosen to make more ridiculous the 
exploiting of knight errantry. “Don Quix¬ 
ote himself is always a misfit.” His im¬ 
agination clothes the most commonplace 
circumstances with romance, and his thirst 
for adventure is only equaled by his pro¬ 
pensity for getting into ludicrous difficul¬ 
ties. After all, there is something about the 
character of Don Quixote that we like, and 
that wins our sympathy and almost our 
admiration. He is at least brave, honest, 
and boyish. Sancho Panza, Don Quixote’s 
squire, is simple and faithful. He is as 
devoid of imagination as his master is 
full of it. The contrast between the two 
adds charm to the picture. 

See Cervantes. 


SAYINGS. 

Murder will out. 

As ill luck would have it. 

Let us make hay while the sun shines. 

You cannot eat your cake and have your cake. 

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. 

I never thrust my nose into other men’s 
porridge. 

I drink when I have occasion, and sometimes 
when I have no occasion. 

A little in one’s own pocket is better than 
much in another man’s purse. 

I can tell where my own shoe pinches me; 
and you must not think, sir, to catch old birds 
with chaff. 

Many count their chickens before they are 
hatched; and where they expect bacon, meet 
with broken bones. 

CRITICISMS. 

Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are “two of 
the most notable creations in all fiction, whose 
adventures have given multitudes pleasure in 
the past, and which will give still greater multi¬ 
tudes pleasure in the future.” 

Probably no book except the Bible has ex¬ 
ceeded Don Quixote in the number of transla¬ 
tions into foreign languages and the multiplicity 
of editions. 

Don Quixote came into being as a protest 
against the unreality of the novels of chivalry 
which at that time were so popular that they 
were apparently having a marked effect on the 
national life and turning the people into a race 
of sentimentalists. An old writer says that it 
was “next to impossible to walk the streets with 
any delight or without danger, so many cavaliers 
were prancing and curvetting before the win¬ 
dows of their mistresses.” It was a wholly un¬ 
natural and theatrical revival of knight-errantry. 
But, with the appearance of Don Quixote, play¬ 
ing the gallant after this manner took on a new 
aspect. The person who did so was twitted by 
high and low, and these fantastic love scenes 
became things of the past, while the novels that 
inspired them, went out of fashion.—Clifton 
Johnson. 

Don Quixote is the book of humanity.—Sainte* 
Beuve. 

In one sense Don Quixote is a satire; but the 
follies it ridicules are those common to all human¬ 
ity and to every age, and the satire is of that 
rare kind which moves not to depreciation, but 
to love and pity of the object—to sympathy 
rather than to contempt, and to tears as well as 
laughter. ... So this burlesque of romance has 
become a real picture of life—this caricature of 
chivalry the truest chivalric model—this life of 
a fool the wisest of books.—Watts. 

No doubt Cervantes at first proposed to him¬ 
self a parody of the romances of chivalry, but 
his genius soon broke away from the leading 
strings of a plot that denied free scope to his 
deeper conception of life and men.— Lowell. 


DOOMSDAY BOOK—DORR 


Don Quixote, with all its unquenchable and 
irresistible humor, its bright views and its cheer¬ 
ful trust in goodness and virtue, was written in 
Cervantes’ old age, at the conclusion of a life 
which had been marked at nearly every step with 
struggle, disappointment, and calamity; it was 
begun in prison, and finished when he felt the 
hand of death pressing cold and heavy upon his 
heart.—Botta. 

Doomsday Book, the record of an of¬ 
ficial survey of England made during the 
reign of William the Conqueror. The ori¬ 
gin of the name is in dispute. It is con¬ 
nected by tradition with the tyranny of the 
Norman nobles. As studied nowadays, it 
appears to be a very systematic record of 
the ownership and occupancy of land. The 
names of owners and renters are set down, 
together with the extent of land occupied 
by each. Other items were the number of 
acres under tillage, in pasture, in meadow, 
or in forest, together with the number and 
kind of domestic animals. The Anglo- 
Saxon Chronicle says: “So very straitly 
‘did he cause the survey to be made, that 
there was not a single hyde, nor a yardland 
of ground, nor—it is shameful to say what 
he thought no shame to do—was there an 
ox or a cow or a pig passed by, and that 
was not down in the accounts, and then all 
these writings were brought to him.” At all 
events, the Doomsday Book became the of¬ 
ficial register of land ownership. It cov¬ 
ers the greater part of England. In that 
country land titles start with the Dooms-* 
day Book. The original is still preserved 
in the government archives at London. See 
William the Conqueror; Record Of¬ 
fice. 

Dore do-ra, Paul Gustave (1833- 
1883), a noted French illustrator of books. 
He was born at Strasburg. He received 
his education, lived, and died in Paris. His 
illustrations of the Bible, of Dante’s Infer¬ 
no, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Tennyson’s 
Idylls of the King, and Cervantes’ Don 
Quixote have made him famous. He is not 
unknown as a painter, but in this depart¬ 
ment his fame is quite secondary. Dore 
was decorated with the cross of the Legion 
of Honor in 1861. 

Dorians, one of the four great branch¬ 
es of the Greek race. The Spartans were 
the chief Dorian representatives. In 


achievement, the Dorians were second only 
to the Ionians. Sparta and Athens were 
rivals in many respects. As compared with 
their neighbors the Dorians were consid¬ 
ered a plain, rude, blunt people, possessing 
character and strength. The Spartans 
were less lively than the Athenians, and did 
not equal them in music or literature. In 
art, however, they developed the Doric 
type of architecture, considered the most 
noble as well as the simplest style of archi¬ 
tecture the world has ever known. See 
Greece. 

Dorkings, an English breed of silver 
and gray domestic fowls. They originated 
in the vicinity of Dorking, a town of Sur¬ 
rey, twenty-two miles southwest of London. 
The Dorkings are not so popular with poul¬ 
try raisers as they once w T ere. See Chicken. 

Dormouse, a sort of field mouse. The 
white-footed mouse of America is some¬ 
times called a dormouse. The common 
dormouse of Europe is a wood mouse with 
a pointed muzzle, large eyes, and a bushy 
tail. It builds nests of leaves and grass in 
tangles of undergrowth, which it enters 
by an opening at the top. Its favorite food 
is acorns, hazelnuts, and the like. In win¬ 
ter time it sleeps for several weeks, hence 
the name, akin to dormant-mouse, or sleep¬ 
ing-mouse. An allied species frequenting 
fruit gardens is called the “garden sleeper” 
by the Germans. See Mouse. 

Dorr, Thomas Wilson (1805-1854), 
a Rhode Island politician and lawyer. He 
was a member of the Rhode Island As¬ 
sembly from 1833-37. He was the leader 
of the people in a demand for a reform in 
the state constitution, which had remained 
unchanged from 1663. Only property 
holders could vote. Some of the older and 
smaller towns had more representatives in 
the legislature than the newer towns hav¬ 
ing several times their population. Failing 
to induce the privileged classes who were 
in power to grant the desired changes, 
Dorr organized an uprising known in Amer¬ 
ican history as Dorr’s Rebellion. It final¬ 
ly assumed such proportions that the Unit¬ 
ed States government interfered and sent 
a force to suppress him. He was arrested, 
convicted of treason, and sentenced to life 
imprisonment. He was pardoned, however, 


DOTHEBOYS HALL—DOUBLE CLOTH 


and died soon afterward a natural death, 
but not before he had lived to see the 
desired reforms carried into execution. 
Without doubt he was a patriotic man of 
excellent intentions. 

Dotheboys (do-the-boys) Hall, in 
Dickens’ Nicholas Nicklehy, a school for 
boys, located in Yorkshire. Of the twenty- 
eight schools described by Dickens in his 
various stories none is better known than 
Dotheboys Hall. Moreover there is no type 
of school which stood more in need of re¬ 
form. The schoolmaster is Mr. Squeers, 
a coarse, brutal, ignorant, self-satisfied 
man, who not only starves, neglects, and 
abuses his pupils, but whose methods of 
giving instruction are so absurd as to be 
laughable, were not the whole picture so 
pitiful that amusement is lost in indigna¬ 
tion. The boys on certain mornings were 
dosed with treacle and brimstone,—“To 
purify their bloods,” said Mr. Squeers. 
“Purify fiddlesticks ends,” said his lady. 

. . . “It spoils their appetites, and comes 
cheaper than breakfast and dinner.” 

The breakfast that follows the medicine 
is “a brown composition which looked like 
diluted pincushions without the covers, and 
was called porridge.” The pupils are sup¬ 
plied with “one book to eight learners.” 
Mr. Squeers explains his method of in¬ 
structing the class in “English spelling and 
philosophy.” “We go upon the practical 
mode of teaching; the regular education 
system. C-l-e-a-n, clean, verb active, to 
make bright, scour. W-i-n, win, d-e-r, der, 
winder, a casement. When the boy knows 
this out of a book he goes and does it. It’s 
just the -same principle as the use of 
globes.” 

That Dickens’ picture of Yorkshire 
schools was not overdrawn and that he 
purposely aimed to bring about the reform 
which resulted from his exposure of exist¬ 
ing conditions is clearly shown in the pref¬ 
ace to the first edition of Nicholas Nicklehy, 
from which the following is taken: 

It has afforded the author great amusement 
and satisfaction, during the progress of this work, 
to learn, from country friends and from a variety 
of ludicrous statements concerning himself in 
provincial newspapers, that more than one York¬ 
shire schoolmaster lays claim to being the original 
of Mr. Squeers. One worthy, he has reason to 


believe, has actually consulted authorities learned 
in the law, as to his having good grounds on 
which to rest an action for libel. . . . The 

author’s object in calling public attention to the 
system would be very imperfectly fulfilled, if 
he did not state now, in his own person, em¬ 
phatically and earnestly, that Mr. Squeers and 
his school are faint and feeble pictures of an 
existing reality, purposely subdued and kept 
down, lest they should be deemed impossible— 
that there are, upon record, trials at law in 
which damages have been sought as a poor rec¬ 
ompense for lasting agonies and disfigurements 
inflicted upon children by the treatment of the 
master in these places, involving such offensive 
and foul details of neglect, ,cruelty, and disease, 
as no writer of fiction would have the boldness 
to imagine. 

Douay, doo-a', or Douai, one of the 
oldest cities in France. It is situated in the 
northeastern part of France in Calais coun¬ 
ty. It is a picturesque, odd city, with an 
old parish church, marketplace, town hall, 
and belfry. It is noted in history as the 
refuge of English Catholics. An English- 
speaking university was maintained here by 
them. Printing presses afforded facilities 
for publishing Catholic books in the Eng¬ 
lish language. The Douay Bible, the Eng¬ 
lish Bible of the Catholic church, was 
published here in 1609. At the time of the 
French Revolution the college and presses 
were driven out and were reestablished near 
Durham, England. 

Double Cloth, a descriptive term ap¬ 
plied to textiles produced by uniting two 
distinct webs during the process of weaving. 
This is done by interlacing some of the 
warp threads of one web into the other 
web at regular intervals, thus fastening 
them together securely. A variety of 
double cloth is produced to fulfill various 
purposes. A cheaper material may be used 
for the lower or back web, thus producing 
a heavy cloth at less expense. A cloth of 
great bulk and thickness may be produced 
for overcoats and cloakings, which is more 
pliable and has a finer surface than could 
be produced by heavy yarns in a single 
cloth. Two-faced fabrics such as the plaid 
lined cloth so popular for golf capes and 
children’s coats are produced in this way. 

A variety of fancy effects may be obtained 
by double weaving. Double-pile cloth has 
a pile on each side. If the pile is cut the 
fabric is called double plush. 


DOUBLET—DOUGLAS 


Doublet, dub'let, a form of outer gar¬ 
ment worn by men during the latter part 
of the fifteenth century. Originally the 
doublet had long skirts and was held in 
place by a belt. Later it was of shorter 
cut, was fitted with great nicety, and pad¬ 
ded, if necessary, to the correct shape. 
After the time of Charles I, in England 
the doublet was made without sleeves, and 
a coat was worn over it. It is supposed 
that the present fashion of the waistcoat 
or vest was developed from the doublet. 

Doubling the Cube, a celebrated math¬ 
ematical problem. According to a Grecian 
legend, the problem originated in the fol¬ 
lowing manner: The people of Delos were 
afflicted by a pestilence due to the darts 
of Apollo. On consulting the oracle of 
the god, they were directed to double the 
size of his altar, which happened to be 
a perfect cube. This they did, but the 
pestilence continued. Upon consulting the 
oracle again they were told that they must 
double the size of this altar without chang¬ 
ing its shape. Hence the problem of find¬ 
ing a cube which shall have just twice the 
volume of a given cube is called the De¬ 
lian problem. The difficulty of the problem 
lies in the fact that no number obtained 
by doubling a cube is itself a perfect cube. 
The perfect cubes are: 1, 8, 27, 64, 125, 
216, 343, 512, 729, 1000, 1331, 1728 etc. 
Their doubles are 2, 16, 54, 128, 250, 432, 
686, 1024, 1458, 2000, 2662, 3456, etc. We 
see readily that none of the doubles are per¬ 
fect cubes. In order to produce a cube by 
multiplying a cube the multiplier must al¬ 
so be a cube. The multiplier 2 is not a 
cube; hence the impossibility of the prob¬ 
lem. See Delos. 

Doubting Castle, in Bunyan s Pilgrim’s 
Progress, the castle where Christian and 
Hopeful are imprisoned by Giant Despair. 
They escaped by means of the key called 
Promise. It is frequently said of one who 
is in a state of irresolution and apprehen¬ 
sion, from which hopeful determination 
would free him, that he is in Doubting 
Castle. See Bunyan. 

Douglas, dug'las, a famous family of 
soldiers and landowners—one of the oldest 
and most powerful families in Scotland. 
A countryside proverb still runs: 


So many, so good as of the Douglases have been. 
Of one surname in Scotland never yet were seen. 

The name means dark water. There 
were two branches of the family. The 
older branch styled themselves the Black 
Douglases; the younger the Red Douglases. 
For centuries border mothers hushed their 
children to sleep with this lullaby: 

Hush ye, hush ye, little pet ye, 

The Black Douglas shall not get ye. 

Of the many Douglases, Sir James the 
Good fought seventy skirmishes in behalf 
of Robert Bruce. He was slain by the 
Saracens while on his way to the Holy 
Land bearing the heart of Bruce to bury 
it in the sacred soil of Palestine. In this 
way the Douglas family added a bloody 
heart to the family coat-of-arms. 

Another notable Douglas was Archibald, 
Bell-the-Cat, fifth Earl of Angus. His 
nickname came in an odd way. A number 
of noblemen were planning measures to get 
rid of one of the king’s favorites whom 
they all feared and hated. Several meth¬ 
ods were proposed, but no one seemed anx¬ 
ious to sacrifice himself to carry out a plan. 
One of those present said the situation re¬ 
minded him of the fabled convention of 
mice. All agreed that a bell should be 
hung on the cat’s neck to give notice of 
her coming, but no one seemed willing to 
hang the bell. “I will bell the cat,” thun¬ 
dered Archibald, and he did. He slew 
the wretch in the king’s own presence in 
Stirling Castle. After old Archibald be¬ 
came unfitted for war, his two sons fell 
in the battle of Flodden and he died bro¬ 
ken-hearted. See Flodden Hill. 

Douglas, Stephen Arnold (1813- 
1861), an American statesman. He was a 
native of Vermont. His father died when 
he was a mere child. His mothei was left 
in needy circumstances. As soon as he was 
old enough he worked at the trade of cab¬ 
inetmaker. His education never extended 
beyond the limits of an academy. He stud¬ 
ied law and was admitted to practice in 
the state of Illinois in 1834. In politics 
he was an adherent of Andrew Jackson 
and soon became leader of the Western 
democracy. He was a man of small stat¬ 
ure and great intellect, with remarkable 


DOUGLASS 


oratorical ability. He was early dubbed 
“the little giant,” a term which supporters 
and opponents insisted on giving him dur¬ 
ing the rest of his life. He rose rapidly 
from one position to another. His fame 
rests, however, on his services in Congress. 
He was a firm supporter of Henry Clay 
in the compromise measures by which that 
great leader strove to reconcile the con¬ 
flicting opinions of the North and South. 
Douglas became known as the father of 
the doctrine of squatter sovereignty. In 
1854 a committee of which he was chair¬ 
man, brought in the famous Kansas-Ne- 
braska bill, which proposed to leave the in¬ 
habitants of Kansas and Nebraska free to 
adopt slavery by a popular vote. As this 
bill repealed the Missouri Compromise of 
1820, Douglas was bitterly assailed by 
many of his former friends in the North. 
He was a candidate repeatedly for the 
Democratic nomination for the presidency, 
but was passed by in 1852 for Franklin 
Pierce; and again in 1856 for Buchanan. 
Pie and Lincoln were political opponents 
for many a year. In 1858 they canvassed 



Mourning dove. 

the state of Illinois together, the prize be¬ 
ing the United States senatorship. The 
JI-23 


author of The Crisis has described the 
skillful way in which Lincoln led Doug¬ 
las into utterances on the subject of slav- 
ery—pitfalls that subsequently brought 
about his political downfall. In 1860 
Douglas was nominated for president by 
a branch of the Democracy, but was de¬ 
feated by Lincoln. He lived long enough 
to witness the outbreak of the Civil War, 
and to give Lincoln hearty support. 
Among his last public utterances was a 
notable one to the effect that the war at 
hand permitted no neutrals. He died at 
Chicago. See Lincoln. 

Douglass, Frederick (1817-1895), a 
noted lecturer and writer. He was born at 
Tuckahoe, Maryland, and died at Wash¬ 
ington, D. C. His father was a white man, 
his mother a negro slave. As a child he 
had a great thirst for learning. While 
employed in a shipyard near Baltimore he 
picked up the letters of the alphabet and 
a number of words from the chalk marks on 
the various timbers. Later a - white woman 
taught him to read. Among the interesting 
incidents related in his story of My Bond¬ 
age and Freedom , is that 
of his experience with a 
noted trainer, named Co¬ 
vey, to whom he was 
hired out in order that 
his spirit might be broken 
into obedience. He over¬ 
came Covey in a hand to 
hand conflict in the barn¬ 
yard. His life was saved 
by the fact that Covey 
was afraid to let the facts 
be known, lest his reputa¬ 
tion as a disciplinarian 
might be destroyed. 
Douglass finally escaped 
to the North. He was 
received by the anti¬ 
slavery leaders, and soon 
developed ability as a 
writer of anti-slavery ar¬ 
ticles and as an effective 
lecturer on the anti- 
slavery platform. He 
visited England and Can¬ 
ada, stirring up sentiment against the en¬ 
slavement of his people. In 1870 he 















DOVE—DOW 


started a paper called the New National 
Era. From time to time he held several 
positions under the national government. 
His features were intelligent. His asso¬ 
ciations were chiefly with white people. 
He can hardly be regarded as a worker 
among his own people of the Booker T. 
Washington type. See Negro. 

Dove, a bird not readily distinguished 
from the pigeon. The most prominent 
American species is the common mourning 
dove. It breeds from Cuba to Manitoba, 
and winters from the Ohio River southward. 
This dove is about twelve inches long, col¬ 
ored much like a wild pigeon. The name 
comes from the peculiarly sweet, mournful, 
cooing call of the male which corresponds 
to the drumming of the partridge and the 
booming of the grouse. “The soft, melan¬ 
choly cooing of the mourning dove, whose 
voice,” says Roosevelt, “always seems far 
away, expresses more than any other sound 
in nature the sadness of gentle, hopeless, 
never-ending grief.” The dove seems quite 
at home in the small groves of farmsteads. 
It builds a careless, flat nest of loose twigs 
at the end of a spreading branch from five 
to fifteen feet above the ground. Eggs, 
two, beautifully white, about an inch long. 
An examination of the stomachs of several 
mourning doves showed that their food 
consisted of seeds of sorrel, spurge, rag¬ 
weed, sunflower, pigeon-grass, violet, 
smartweed, buckwheat, and wheat. 

The dove of history is necessarily an 
Old World'species. It is the emblem of 
innocence and gentle affection. Noah sent 
a dove forth from the ark to see whether 
the waters were abated. The turtledove 
was offered by the Israelite as a burnt of¬ 
fering. King David exclaimed, “Oh, that 
I had wings like a dove! for then I would 
fly away, and be at rest. Then I would 
fly away and remain in the wilderness.” 
Christ, it will be remembered, overthrew 
“the seats of them that sold doves” in the 
temple. In ecclesiastical art, the dove is 
the symbol of the Holy Ghost. In Mat¬ 
thew iii: 16, we find “Lo, the Spirit of God 
descending like a dove and lighting .upon 
him.” In heraldry the dove bearing an 
olive branch is the emblem of peace. 

See Pigeon. 


Dover, the capital city of Delaware, 
situated on Jones Creek, forty-eight miles 
south of Wilmington. Dover is in a fruit¬ 
growing region, and the canning and pack¬ 
ing of fruits and vegetables are its chief 
industries. There are also saw-mills, ma¬ 
chine-shops, foundries, and carriage fac¬ 
tories. The State College for Colored Stu¬ 
dents, and the Wilmington Methodist 
Episcopal Conference Academy are located 
at Dover. Other structures of interest are 
the state capitol building, connected with 
which is a state library of 50,000 volumes, 
the county courthouse, the postoffice, a 
United States Government building, and 
handsome monuments to two distinguished 
citizens, Caesar Rodney, one of the signers 
of the Declaration of Independence, and 
Col. John Haslett, who lost his life in the 
Revolution. 

Dover, a city of England. It is situ¬ 
ated sixty-six miles southeast of London, 
on the point of land nearest to the French 
coast. The corresponding French port is 
Calais, twenty-three and one-half miles 
distant. A line of steam ferryboats trans¬ 
ports passengers, mails, and baggage be¬ 
tween the respective railway stations, 
through which there is a stream of traffic 
continually. A project is under considera¬ 
tion to connect the two stations by a tun¬ 
nel. The chalk cliffs of England rise here 
to a height of nearly 400 feet. The port is 
strongly fortified and garrisoned by Eng¬ 
lish troops There are also remains of 
ancient Norman and Saxon fortifications. 
The present population is about 41,000. A 
number of American cities have borrowed 
the name. 

Dow, Neal (1804-1897), a noted Pro¬ 
hibitionist. He was born in Portland, 
Maine, of Quaker ancestry. He was twice 
mayor of Portland, and twice a member 
of the legislature. During his first term 
as mayor he framed a Prohibition bill, car¬ 
ried it to the legislature, and had it passed 
by both houses and signed by the governor 
and put in effect,—all inside of three days. 
It was hastily enacted, but it was not drawn 
hastily. It is known the world over as 
“the Maine Law.” Mr. Dow served in the 
Union army as colonel of the Maine vol¬ 
unteers. He was commissioned briga- 


DOWIE—DOYLE 


dier-general by President Lincoln. He was 
captured by the Confederates, and was 
confined in Libby Prison for eight months, 
until exchanged for General Fitz-Hugh 
Lee. Mr. Dow visited England three 
times on lecture tours. In 1894 he was the 
Prohibition candidate for president. 

Dowie, John Alexander (1847-1907), 
the founder of the “Christian Catholic 
Church in Zion.” He was born in Edin¬ 
burgh, Scotland, where he grew up, an 
ordinary Scotch boy, beginning to study for 
the ministry when nineteen years of age. 
He went to Australia where he held two 
pastorates and about 1880 began to preach, 
teach and practice “divine healing” in an¬ 
swer to prayer. In 1890 he settled in Chi¬ 
cago, Illinois, built a “tabernacle” at 
Woodlawn and attracted an immense fol¬ 
lowing by his preaching and healing. He 
was arrested many times for violating city 
ordinances in regard to the care of the sick, 
but was acquitted in every instance, and the 
advertising these cases gave him was worth 
the large sums of money they cost him. He 
established many organizations, among 
which the Christian Catholic Church in 
Zion, the Divine Healing Association and 
the Zion Bank demand mention. The 
stockholders in the latter institution had 
no other guarantee excepting Dowie’s per¬ 
sonal word. In 1899 Dowie purchased 
6,000 acres of land on Lake Michigan, 
forty-two miles north of Chicago and here 
during the next two years grew up a most 
remarkable city with a population of 
10,000 people, and with what a magazine 
writer calls its “curious jumble of religion 
and get-rich-quick activities.” As the city 
grew the number of organizations grew, 
and as the leader’s wealth and influence in¬ 
creased so his exercise of power increased 
until he became spiritually and financially 
supreme in the community he had estab¬ 
lished. The beginning of the end came in 
1903 when with a following of 3,000 per¬ 
sons Dowie made an expedition to New 
York, expecting to take the city by storm. 
Instead he was laughed at and neglected, 
and the expedition, which cost him 
$500,000, served only to make him ridicu¬ 
lous in the public eye. Soon rebellion 
began to break out among his followers, 


rivals appeared, and in 1906 he was de¬ 
posed from his position of “General Over¬ 
seer” in Zion, and another set up in his 
place. He was accused also of various mis¬ 
deeds, including misappropriation of funds. 
His reverses caused a nervous breakdown 
from which he never recovered, and in 
1907 he died among his alienated follow¬ 
ers in the city which he had builded. 

That, at the outset of his career, Dr. 
Dowie was sincere cannot be doubted. 
Whatever his other gifts may have been, 
they must have fallen short, without sin¬ 
cerity, of making him the power he became. 
There are many ready to testify to cures 
wrought by his prayers. The kindest and 
perhaps the most reasonable explanation of 
his later years is that his marvelous success 
had proven too much for him and that he 
was in a measure insane. There will al¬ 
ways remain those who name him 
“Prophet” and greater numbers still who 
name him “Fake.” 

Zion City, its population decreased by 
half, with rival prophets and dissensions 
many, still exists. Passing through it by 
train or on the electric cars one may read 
immense sign boards bearing the inscrip¬ 
tion, “No Tobacco, Whiskey, Beer, The¬ 
aters. No Drugs, Doctors, Pork, Oysters. 
A Clean City for a Clean People.” 

Downing, Andrew Jackson (1815- 
1852), the first prominent landscape gar¬ 
dener of America. A native of New York. 
In 1841 his treatise on the Theory and 
Practice of Landscape Gardening ap¬ 
peared, a book of wide influence. In 1845 
Fruits and Fruit Trees of North Ameri¬ 
ca was issued. He founded the Horticul¬ 
turist at Albany in 1846. In 1851 he 
visited Europe. On his return he was em¬ 
ployed to lay out the public grounds at 
Washington. On his way from Albany to 
New York City he lost his life in a steam¬ 
boat race on the Hudson. Downing’s in¬ 
fluence is especially valuable on the side of 
simple, natural grounds. Indirectly he is 
said to have influenced Frederick Law 
Olmsted who planned Central Park of 
New York City. 

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, an English 
novelist. He was born in Edinburgh, Scot¬ 
land, in 1859. He was educated at a Ro» 


DRACHENFELS—DRAGON 


man Catholic college m Lancashire, and at 
the University of Edinburgh. He prac¬ 
ticed as a physician for a time, but having 
published several successful stories, he 
gave over the profession of medicine for 
literature. Among his best known stories 
are Micah Clarke, A Study in Scarlet, The 
Hound of the Baskervilles, The White 
Company. Doyle is most noted, -however, 
for his creation of the character of Sher¬ 
lock Holmes. The Adventures of Sherlock 
Holmes are a series of detective stories 
which have been extremely popular. 
Holmes is represented as an amateur de¬ 
tective of great skill. By scientific knowl¬ 
edge and methods of reasoning, he makes 
use of the most inconsequential facts to 
discover remote and surprising causes. He 
is a cocaine 'fiend, and is very eccentric, 
but, withal, so real an individual that his 
personality makes a lasting impression upon 
the reader. Aside from the twelve tales in 
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the 
character of Holmes appears in many oth¬ 
er stories, especially in a series entitled 
The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Doyle 
was knighted in 1902. 

Drachenfels, dra'ken-fels, or Dragon’s 
Rock, a mountain on the Rhine. It is one 
of the range known as the Sieben Gebirge, 
or Seven Mountains. The stone used for 
Cologne Cathedral and for many other not¬ 
ed buildings was quarried here. The 
mountain rises abruptly from the river to 
a height of over 1,000 feet. The cave 
where the old dragon was wont to live is 
still pointed out to the traveler. The sum¬ 
mit commands a magnificent prospect, in¬ 
cluding the university town of Bonn in 
the foreground, and Cologne with its ca¬ 
thedral spires farther down the valley. By¬ 
ron saw all this with a poet’s eye: 

The castled crag of Drachenfels 
Frowns o’er the wide and winding Rhine, 
Whose breast of waters broadly swells 
Between the banks which bear the vine; 

And hills all rich with blossom’d trees, 

And fields which promise corn and wine 
And scatter’d cities crowning these, 

Whose far white walls along them shine, 
Have strew’d a scene which I should see 
With double joy wert thou with me. 

Drachma, drak'ma, a Greek unit of 
value and of weight. The present Grecian 


coin is worth nineteen and one-half cents 
in gold. It equals the French franc. The 
Creeks buy and sell by the drachma’s 
worth, just as we keep accounts in dollars. 
A member of the Grecian legislature, for 
instance, is allowed a salary of 1,800 
drachmas for the session. The ancient 
silver drachma varied in value, but cor¬ 
responded to the Roman denarius. In 
the day of Demosthenes a fat ox was valued 
at eighty drachmas and a sheep at ten. The 
ancient weight known as the drachma was 
the sixth-thousandth part of a talent—• 
less than one-fourth of an ounce. See 
Coin ; Money. 

Draco, an Athenian lawgiver of the 
seventh century B. C. He was one of the 
archons or nine chief magistrates, and 
about 621 B. C. was appointed to draw up 
a written code of laws, a thing never done 
before in Athens. It is probable that Draco 
made no new laws, but compiled and put 
into definite form the laws that had existed 
by custom. The “laws of Draco” were en¬ 
graved on wooden blocks and set up in a 
public place where all might see them. 
They were very severe, almost every of¬ 
fense being made punishable by death. It 
is said of them that they were “written in 
blood.” Draco’s laws remained in force 
until 594 B. C. when Solon replaced them 
with a milder code. Laws which are espe¬ 
cially severe are often spoken of as draconic 
or draconian laws. See Solon. 

Draft, in money transactions, an order 
drawn by one person upon another for the 
payment of money to a third. As common¬ 
ly used, a draft is an order from one bank 
on another to pay money to the person 
named in the draft. It differs from a check 
in that the order is drawn in the name of 
the bank, instead of the name of an in¬ 
dividual, or other business corporation. An 
individual wishing to transmit money to 
another may, if he has a deposit at a bank, 
write a personal check, or, if he has no 
deposit, he may purchase for a small sum 
in excess of the amount he wishes to send, 
a bank draft, or bill of exchange. This the 
receiver may cash at the bank on which it is 
drawn. 

Dragon, a fabulous animal of mon¬ 
strous size and fierceness. As represented 


DRAGON FLY—DRAKE 


in ancient art it is not unlike a winged 
crocodile ; in heraldry it is' a nondescript 
quadruped with fierce claws, large armed 
wings, a crested head, fiery eyes, and an 
open mouth, usually spouting fire. In 
legends the dragon is a fiery monster guard¬ 
ing a treasure, as the Golden Fleece, or 
the Garden of the Hesperides. The idea 
or modern notion most nearly approaching 
the dragon is possibly the popular concep¬ 
tion of the devil, “who goeth about as a 
roaring lion, seeking whom he may de¬ 
vour.” Spenser speaks of the dragon 
“stretched like a great hill.” Among 
Christian traditions, that of St. George 
and the Dragon is one of the most noted. 
The dragon, which is regarded in China 
as a sort of divinity, has been made that na¬ 
tion’s imperial emblem. The figure appears 
on the Chinese flag. 

Dragon Fly, one of the most noticeable 
insects. Its wings look like woven threads 
of iridescent glass; its eyes like beads 
of gold. Also called mosquito hawk and 
devil’s darning needle,—the former name 
from its habit of catching mosquitoes on 
the wing; the latter, from the elongated 
shape of its body. Two pairs of strong 
wings stand at right angles to the body 
and are seldom folded. This insect can 
fly backward and forward without turn¬ 
ing—something no bird can do. Dragon 
flies are seen wherever there are mosqui¬ 
toes to catch, but especially over meadows 
and stagnant water. The female lays her 
eggs on the surface of the water. The 
nymph (see article on Insects) is a fine 
swimmer and lives on such insects as it 
can catch until grown. It then climbs the 
stem of an aquatic plant, bursts its last 
nymph skin, and comes out a dragon fly, 
leaving the empty coat clinging to the 
plant. The dragon fly is perfectly harm¬ 
less. 

Today I saw the dragon-fly 

Come from the wells where he did lie. 

An inner impulse rent the veil 
Of his old husk; from head to tail 
Came out clear plates of sapphire mail. 

He dried his wings: like gauze they grew; 
Through crofts and pastures wet with dew, 

A living flash of light he flew. —Tennyson. 

Drainage, a method of relieving the 
soil of surplus water. The method of 


withdrawing water by open surface ditches 
or drains is too well known to require 
discussion. Surface ditches are open to ob¬ 
jections. They fill up and must be redug. 
They are in the way of the farmer’s team 
and implements, and they withdraw land 
from cultivation. In the older countries, 
where labor is cheap and land is expensive, 
tile draining is resorted to. Circular sec¬ 
tions of earthenware tiling, shaped like 
joints of stovepipe, but with much thicker 
walls, are laid end to end in ditches, 
and covered with earth again. Such drains, 
if carefully constructed, last for genera¬ 
tions without renewal. They must be laid, 
however, deep enough to be beyond the 
reach of tools, or possible pressure from the 
'feet of animals or heavy machinery. A 
tile drain is supposed to draw the water 
from a strip of land the width of which 
is from five to twenty tirrfes the depth of 
the drain, according to the nature of the 
soil. A drain three feet below the surface 
of a stiff, heavy clay will drain a strip 
of ground about fifteen feet in width. A 
similar drain four feet beneath the surface 
of sandy soil is quite sufficient for a strip 
forty, or even eighty feet wide. 

The utility of drainage is readily under¬ 
stood. Under favorable conditions, the 
roots of field crops descend from two to 
five or even fifteen feet, but never below 
the level of standing water. Changes from 
day to day in atmospheric pressure cause 
the surface of the earth to breathe. When 
atmospheric pressure increases a little more 
air enters the surface. When the pres¬ 
sure is less part of the air leaves The earth. 
This breathing extends down only to the 
level of standing water, and marks the 
limit to which root growth descends. For 
this^ simple reason drainage is of great 
benefit to crop growers. There is no 
danger of the earth becoming too dry; 
for the soil, however well drained, acts like 
a sponge, raising as much water from 
great depths as is needed for ordinary pur¬ 
poses of cultivation. Care must be taken, 
of course, to give the entire line of pipes 
a pitch in the same direction, and to pro¬ 
vide a free outlet at the lower end. 

Drake, Sir Francis (1539-1595), an 
Fmglish navigator. He is one of the great 


DRAKE—DRAMA 


captains whose exploits brought renown 
upon the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and 
gave England command of the ocean. He 
was a native of Devonshire, but his boy¬ 
hood was spent among sailors. As a lad 
he made numerous voyages to France and 
the Netherlands. In 1570 he was sent to 
the West Indies in command of a small 
fleet. He enriched himself and his queen 
with the plunder of Spanish ships. The 
queen was so delighted with his exploits 
that seven years later she sent him out 
again with five vessels. This time he roved 
along both coasts of South America, crossed 
the Pacific Ocean, and returned home by 
way of the Cape of Good Hope, his vessel 
laden with treasure plundered from the 
Spaniards. In 1587 Spain was making 
ready her famous Armada. Drake was 
dispatched with a fleet to do as much 
damage as possible. He entered the harbor 
of Cadiz with thirty sail, destroyed a 
hundred Spanish vessels, captured a num¬ 
ber of returning merchantmen, and re¬ 
turned home as before with an immense 
amount of gold and silver. This exploit he 
termed “singeing the king of Spain’s 
beard.” During Lord Howard’s encounter 
with the famous Armada in the English 
Channel, Drake gave a good account of 
himself. From the Spanish point of view 
Drake was a wild sea rover,—a pirate who 
plundered ships for the sake of their gold 
and silver; but in the eye of England, he 
was a bold naval commander who struck 
terror into the hearts of her enemies and 
brought home great treasure. He died 
finally at sea and was buried in the ocean. 
A chair made from some timbers of his 
ship, the Golden Hind, in which he cir¬ 
cumnavigated the world, was presented to 
Oxford University, where it may still be 
seen. 

Who is that short, sturdy, plainly dressed man 
who stands with legs a little apart and hands 
behind his back, looking up with keen gray eyes 
into the face of each speaker? His cap is in his 
hands, so you can see the bullet head of crisp 
brown hair and the wrinkled forehead, as well as 
the high cheek bones, the short square face, the 
broad temples, the thick lips, which are yet as 
firm as granite. A coarse, plebeian stamp of man; 
yet the whole figure and attitude are that of 
boundless determination, self-possession, energy; 
and when at last he speaks a few blunt words, 


all eyes are turned respectfully upon him,—for 
his name is Francis Drake.—Charles Kingsley. 

Drake, Joseph Rodman (1795-1820), 
an American poet. Born in New York 
City. The poet was distantly related to 
the admiral of that name. At the age of 
five he was a famous hand to get up 
conundrums. Having been banished to 
the attic one day for some offense, his 
sister started upstairs to see how the 
little seven-year-old was getting on and 
found him pacing the floor with a make- 
believe sword on his shoulder, guarding a 
heap of rubbish, and pretending that he 
was Don Quixote guarding his armor in 
the church. Drake tried clerking and then 
studied medicine. One sunny afternoon 
Drake and Fitz-Greene Halleck were sail¬ 
ing with a friend on New York Bay, when 
a slight shower came up and a rainbow 
spanned the sky. Halleck made the re¬ 
mark that “It would be heaven to lounge 
on a rainbow and read Tom Campbell.” 
This brought Drake and Halleck together, 
and they became famous chums. They 
wrote a series of witty poems for the New 
York Evening Post over the signature of 
Croaker & Co. or Croaker, Jr. Drake’s 
fame rests chiefly on an exquisite poem, the 
Culprit Fay. This poem was written in 
three days, in the heat of an argument 
with Halleck and Cooper, to prove that 
a fairy tale may be made to grow out of 
American soil. The American Flag is 
considered Drake’s best shorter poem. It 
begins with the familiar lines: 

When Freedom from her mountain height 
Unfurled her standard to the air. 

She tore the azure robe of night, 

And set the stars of glory there, etc. 

At Drake’s death, Halleck wrote a beau¬ 
tiful poem from which the following stan¬ 
za is often quoted: 

Green be the turf above thee, 

Friend of my better days! 

None knew thee but to love thee. 

Nor named thee but to praise. 

Drama, a story designed to be told by 
actors. The very word drama means ac¬ 
tion. The characters of the story are sup¬ 
posed to be represented by real persons 
who imitate them in voice, gesture, dress, 
manners, and actions. Any number of ac- 


DRAMA 


tors may be introduced. In a dialogue the 
two participants remain in the same frame 
of mind throughout; but in the drama the 
actors change their minds as events de¬ 
velop, as is the case in the actual life which 
they are attempting to depict. 

Man is naturally imitative. He natural¬ 
ly gives expression by voice and gesture to 
his emotions and conceptions. The as¬ 
sumption of character by dress and decora¬ 
tion seems also a natural desire. A child 
likes to “dress up” and play he is some 
one else. Nations in their childhood did 
the same. This is a preliminary step 
toward the drama, which imitates action as 
well as appearance and manner. Dra¬ 
matic performances of some kind have 
been known doubtless among all nations, 
although comparatively few possess any¬ 
thing that may be called dramatic litera¬ 
ture. 

The earliest forms of drama have been 
connected in some way with religious rites. 
In the early drama poetry was invariably 
the vehicle of expression. In modern 
times prose is permissible. The history 
of literature shows that dramatic poetry 
forms one of the ’three great classes of 
poetry, the others being epic and lyric. 
In their development epic verse and lyric 
verse precede dramatic, as song, gesture, 
and speech precede the imitation of action. 

The drama is commonly divided into two 
great classes, tragedy and comedy. The 
former presents the serious problems of 
life,—such characters, deeds, and circum¬ 
stances as lead to a fatal issue. Comedy 
presents the humorous and happy side of 
life. If misfortune and trouble are in¬ 
troduced, they are only temporary. lit 
may be noted that, in form, tragedy is 
the more largely concerned with action; 
comedy depending more upon sprightly 
conversation for its effects. From combina¬ 
tions of tragedy and comedy result the 
minor forms of drama, tragi-comedy, melo¬ 
drama, farce, grand opera, opera bouffe 
and burletta. Closet drama is a term 
used to designate a literary production 
dramatic in form, but not suited for pres¬ 
entation on the stage. Tennyson’s Queen 
Mary and Longfellow’s The Spanish Stu¬ 
dent are examples of the closet drama. 


The most interesting ancient dramatic 
literature, and the most important on ac¬ 
count of its influence, is that of Greece. 
Both forms of Grecian drama, tragedy and 
comedy, had their origin in the religious 
festivals held in honor of Bacchus. The 
earliest examples are no longer extant; but 
the credit for the first drama, a tragedy, 
is given to Thespis, who lived in ,the 
sixth century before Christ. It must not 
be understood that Thespis wrote anything 
like a complete drama. He simply in¬ 
troduced a monologue, or possibly a dia¬ 
logue, into the choruses sung at the Bac¬ 
chanalian festivals. This was, however, the 
beginning, and Thespis is called the 
founder of the drama. Dramatic art is 
known also as the Thespian art. 

Among Greek writers of the drama, 
three names stand out prominently,—those 
of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides,—• 
all writers of tragedy. Of these, Aeschylus 
is the earliest and the greatest. Three 
laws, the “unities,” were obeyed rigidly 
in the composition and presentation of 
these dramas. They were the unity of 
place, which meant that the entire action 
must take place in the same locality; the 
unity of time, meaning that the action must 
be confined to one day; the unity of plot 
or action, meaning that no minor plot shall 
be admitted, but every incident and speech 
must be subordinate to the main argument. 

Besides the “unities,” other limitations 
restricted the Greek dramatist. His work 
must be in poetry, and poetry of an intri¬ 
cate and difficult meter. PI is subjects were 
limited to mythology and tradition, with 
occasionally some slight addition of con¬ 
temporary events. In spite of these strict 
laws, the tragedies of Aeschylus are of a 
high order, both in respect to poetic quality 
and dramatic power. In conformity to the 
“unity of place,” it will be seen that the 
Greek play must be presented in one act. 
Another drama might be presented imme¬ 
diately following the first. Sometimes three 
were written to be given consecutively. 
The series was then called a trilogy. In 
Grecian comedy, Aristophanes and Menan¬ 
der are the most noted names. 

The Romans added little of importance 
to dramatic literature. Terence and-Plautus 


DRAMA 




produced comedies after Greek models. 
The only Roman tragedies extant are those 
ascribed to Seneca, which seem to be more 
properly closet drama than the work of a 
playwright. The Roman theater, however, 
was the first to divide the drama into acts. 
Horace states that the number of acts re¬ 
quired in a work of art is five. 

In the early centuries of the Christian 
era the drama made no advancement. The 
only dramatic literature produced was that 
of Roswitha, a German nun, who is cred¬ 
ited with a number of comedies in the 
style of Terence. When the drama again 
comes into prominence, it is in connection 
with religious rites. The presentations were 
called Mysteries or Miracle Plays, and the 
subjects were taken from the Bible, or 
the legends of saints. The home of 
this form of drama was France, although 
it extended to other countries. As early 
as the thirteenth century a French author, 
named Halle, had produced something very 
closely akin to modern comedy; and by the 
fourteenth century France had introduced 
both the “profane mystery,” a play deal¬ 
ing with current events, and the “morality 
play,” an allegorical play. 

Under the influence of the Renaissance, 
French drama, especially tragedy, seems to 
have undergone a complete revolution. The 
dramas of Seneca became, and remained 
for many years, the model. Corneille, re¬ 
garded as the “liberator of French thought 
and literary expression,” began his great 
work in 1635 with Le Cid. To Corneille, 
Racine, Moliere, and, in a lesser degree, 
to their followers, is due the fact that both 
“comedy and tragedy now assumed shapes 
which France long retained unaltered, and 
which for a time gave law and pattern to 
all Europe except England, and even to 
some extent there.” About 1830 the French 
tragedy was again revolutionized by the 
“romantic movement,” with Victor Hugo 
and the elder Dumas as its leaders. Com¬ 
edy, too, underwent decided changes. Du¬ 
mas the Younger, Sardou, and De Musset 
are other French dramatists of modern 
times. 

Spain is said to be the “only country of 
modern Europe which shares with Eng¬ 
land the honor of having achieved, at a 


relatively early date, the creation of a 
genuinely national form of the regular 
drama.” Lope de Rueda is regarded as 
the founder of Spanish drama. He gave 
it permanent form. The name of Calderon 
stands high as a poet, if below that of 
Vega as a dramatist. Many of the 
early Spanish dramas were of a religious 
character; many are classed as “romantic” 
dramas; while the most distinctively Span¬ 
ish are those which satirize fashionable 
life and intrigue. Lowell says, “The na¬ 
tional genius triumphed over traditional 
criterions of art and the Spanish theatre, 
asserting its own happier instincts, became 
and continued Spanish, with an unspeak¬ 
able charm and flavor of its own.” 

Germany has contributed less to the Eu¬ 
ropean drama than any other great literary 
nation. Yet one of the greatest dramas, 
Faust, is the work of a German, Goethe. 
It has been said that Faust, Hamlet, and 
the Book of Job are the world’s greatest 
three dramas. The Germans, moreover, 
have cultivated the art of acting, and have 
added much to dramatic criticism and de¬ 
velopment of the theory of the stage. Les¬ 
sing, who is regarded as authority on dra¬ 
matic theory, produced several dramas, 
Minna von Barnhelm and Nathan der 
Weise being two of the best known. 
Schiller’s Walle?istein J s Leben und Tod and 
Goethe’s Egmont are other popular Ger¬ 
man dramas. 

Among Scandinavian nations, the Nor¬ 
wegians, Bjornson and Ibsen, have written 
plays dealing with social problems. 

In England, the drama was late in tak¬ 
ing definite form. The miracle plays were 
popular here. Several collections of these, 
as those of Chester, Coventry, and Town- 
ley, have been preserved. From the be¬ 
ginning of the sixteenth century we find 
the drama making progress. There is more 
variety in the ^mystery plays. Morality 
plays, in which vice and virtues are per¬ 
sonified, appear. Interludes, introducing 
and satirizing current events, also add to 
the variety. In the latter part of this cen¬ 
tury England’s great and original school 
of dramatists, the Elizabethan, arose. As 
• forerunners of this school we find the 
names of Udall, Still, and Sackville. Udall 



DRAPER-DRAUGHTS 


produced the first English comedy in 1540. 
Still wrote a comedy, and Sackville the 
first English tragedy. Then almost sud¬ 
denly appear the University group, as they 
were called,—Marlowe, Green, Peele, and 
Lyly, following no foreign model, but mak¬ 
ing the beginnings of true English tragedy. 

Shakespeare, the greatest dramatist of 
modern times, many would say the greatest 
the world has ever seen, produced his first 
play, Love's Labor Lost, about 1589. With 
Shakespeare, as belonging to the Eliza¬ 
bethan period, must be mentioned Ben 
Jonson, Chapman, Beaumont and Fletcher, 
Massinger a-nd Ford, Webster, Middleton, 
Dekker, and Shirley. The work of this 
school closed with the death of Shirley, 
1666. 

After the Restoration we find great 
changes. Influenced by the French drama, 
as well as by Cromwell’s love of music, 
a musical drama was introduced, followed 
by what are called “heroic” plays, the 
noticeable characteristic of which is that 
they employ the rhymed couplet. For 
twenty years these held the stage, Dry- 
den’s name being most prominent among 
authors of this class of drama. Dryden, 
however, finally returned to the blank verse 
of the earlier drama, and his examples of 
tragedy in that form are the last pure 
English tragedy. 

Comedy, however, did not share the 
fate of tragedy. The influence of the 
French Moliere, of Jonson, and of Fletcher 
of the preceding century, shows itself here. 
Congreve, Wycherley, Vanburgh, and Far- 
quhar produced many successful comedies. 
An attack on the indecency of the stage 
by Jeremy Collier about this time had 
effect. A little later, the names of Gold¬ 
smith and Sheridan appear as writers of 
comedy. Their plays are the only ones 
from this group of writers which still 
appear on the stage. 

America has produced no dramatist 
worthy of the name. Brilliant translators 
and adapters have not been lacking, how¬ 
ever. The adaptation of the historical novel, 
and the so-called rural plays are distinc¬ 
tively American. The United States may 
claim many notable players and theatrical 
proprietors who have done much to en¬ 


courage the American playwright and the 
American play; but the day of the Ameri¬ 
can drama is yet to come. 

The drama’s laws, the drama’s patrons give 
For we that live to please must please to live. 

—Dr. Johnson. 

The ages and circumstances in which drama 
has flourished must have been those in which 
it occupied for a time, and sometimes almost 
monopolized, the position of public instructor 
and informer on questions of thought and news, 
as well as that of public entertainer.—Will 
Clemens, in Americana. 

Spain and England alone, among modern 
civilized nations, possess a theatrical literature 
independent in its origin, characteristic in its 
form, and reflecting faithfully the moral, social, 
and intellectual features of the people among 
whom it arose.—Shaw. 

Dramatical is, as it were, a visible history: 
for it sets out the image of things as if they 
were present, and history as if they were past.—• 
Lord Bacon. 

A play ought to be a just image of human 
nature.—Dryden. 

Draper, Andrew Sloan (1848-1913), 

an American educator and college president, 
His birthplace was Westford, New York. 
He received his early education at Albany 
Academy, then studied law at the Albany 
Law School, and took up its practice in 
that city. He was for several years a mem¬ 
ber of the Albany board of education, and 
in 1882 was appointed to the state normal 
college board. He won distinction as a 
member of the New York state assembly 
and was a judge of the United States Court 
of Alabama Claims under President Ar¬ 
thur. In 1886 he was made superintendent of 
public instruction of New York, which po¬ 
sition he filled for six years. From this 
time Mr. Draper’s entire attention was 
given to the cause of education. In 1892 
he became superintendent of schools in 
Cleveland, Ohio, and ten years later was 
elected president of the University of Illi¬ 
nois. This position he resigned in 1904 to 
become commissioner of education of the 
state of New York. Mr. Draper pub¬ 
lished a number of works on educational 
subjects, among them The Organization 
and Administration of City School Sys- 
tems, American Schools and American 
Citizenship, American Universities and the 
National Life. 

Draughts. See Checkers. 


DRAWING—DREADNOUGHT 


Drawing, in a broad sense the art of 
producing upon a flat surface the likeness 
of objects or of scenes. In a restricted 
and more common use of the word, draw¬ 
ing usually includes only such representa¬ 
tions as are produced in outline with the 
shading necessary to develop roundness. In 
this sense pictures in oil and water-color 
are not drawings. They are paintings and 
should be so called. 

Of free-hand drawings various classifica¬ 
tions or groupings may be made. According 
to their style, dependent upon the ma¬ 
terials used, they are classed as chalk draw¬ 
ings, pen drawings, and wash drawings. 
The term chalk drawings includes draw¬ 
ings with the lead pencil. Colored chalks 
are used most commonly. In pastel draw¬ 
ing numerous colored crayons of a fine 
quality are employed. Pen drawings are 
often outlines simply. An effect of relief 
is secured by doubling lines on the shadow 
side. When finished drawings are pro¬ 
duced with the pen, the shading is done 
by means of combining fine lines. In 
wash drawings the outlines are sketched in 
with brush or pencil, and the shading 
“washed in” with the brush, in India ink, 
or sepia. Wash drawings and water colors 
differ in that wash drawings are black and 
white. 

As regards their purpose drawings may 
be classed as sketches, studies, academic 
drawings, carbons, and finished drawings. 
A sketch is supposed to present the chief 
features only of the scene or object, with 
no attempt at completeness of detail. A 
study is a finished drawing of some one 
part of an object or figure. The sketch 
offers an opportunity for the display of 
artistic taste, demanding descrimination in 
the putting in of some things and the leav¬ 
ing out of others. The study, on the other 
hand, requires no display of taste in its 
placement, but shows how carefully and 
with what accuracy one may work out 
detail. Academic drawings are those made 
in art schools and academies from living 
models or from lay figures. The model 
may be lighted by natural light or arti¬ 
ficially. Lamplight gives stronger con¬ 
trast of light and shadow than does day¬ 
light. A finished drawing, as the term 


indicates, is one which is complete in every 
part, as perfect as the artist can make it. 
The cartoon is described in a special article. 

There are few studies which train so 
many faculties as does drawing. Hand 
and eye are taught to cooperate with the 
powers of observation and of memory, 
while the development of muscle control 
is no small part of the educational value 
of thorough training in drawing. That 
these facts are recognized generally is evi¬ 
denced by the curriculums of the public 
schools of nearly all nations, which show 
drawing as an important feature from the 
primary grades upw r ard. 

The work of a draughtsman or architect 
who makes plans or diagrams rather than 
likenesses is distinguished from free-hand 
drawing by the term mechanical. Mechani¬ 
cal drawing is taught as a special course in 
high schools and colleges. 

Dreadnought, a battleship added to 
the British navy in 1906. It is 490 feet 
long, 82 feet wide, and draws 31 feet of 
water. It displaces 17,900 tons of water. 
It carries ten guns that throw twelve-inch 
shells a distance of four miles, and sixteen 
four-inch guns. It is protected with armor 
plate eleven inches in thickness. Under 
full head of steam—23,000 horse-power— 
it makes twenty-one knots or over twenty- 
four miles an hour. At the time, it was the 
largest, the heaviest, the most nearly bullet¬ 
proof and the swiftest battleship afloat. It 
cost no less than $9,000,000. It set the 
pace for a new type of naval construc¬ 
tion. Other nations began to build large 
ships, and the United Kingdom felt 
obliged to build still larger—super-Dread- 
noughts. In 1909 there were 6 ships of 
this type in the French navy; 10 in the 
German navy; 9 in the British navy; 6 in 
the American navy, etc. Nor was this all. 
Japan had 2 in the water and 6 under 
way. Germany had 11 in the shipyards. 
The United Kingdom and the United 
States are building more of them. 

The significance of' the Dreadnought is 
comparable to that of our own ironclad 
Monitor that rendered wooden navies use¬ 
less. In the great naval review held in 
the Thames in 1909 the United Kingdom 
drew up 150 men-of-war in a double line 


DREAM 


for inspection. They cost the nation $300,- 
000,000. Scarce any of them were a 
dozen years old. The most antiquated 
bark in the fleet carried a belt of armor 
20 inches thick, and bore date of 1889. 
Yet, if taken out to sea and given a 
free fight, the Dreadnought and its con¬ 
sorts might have stood off the rest of 
the British fleet with ease. The 12-inch 
guns of a Dreadnought can put holes 
through anything else afloat before their 
opponents approach within a mile of what 
to them is target distance. The shells of 
nine-tenths of the ships in the British navy 
would have about as much effect on a ship 
of the Dreadnought type as dried peas 
would have on a barn. If the entire British 
fleet, the ships of the Dreadnought type 
excepted, were attacked by half a dozen 
of the new German ships, the only way 
to save a part of the fleet would be flight 
to all points of the compass; for, if the 
fleet were to keep together, the ships could 
be sent to the bottom, one by one, about as 
fast as the monster 12-inch Krupp guns 
could be brought to bear on them. The 
naval situation is one of consternation and 
has become one of stupendous financial 
magnitude. 

The building of a modern battleship is 
so expensive as to threaten bankruptcy to 
a nation. It costs about as much to build, 
equip, and maintain one of these ships as it 
would to pur. up new buildings and main¬ 
tain Harvard University. See Armor 
Plate. 

Dream, a procession of images or fan¬ 
tastic ideas passing through the mind while 
one is asleep. Roughly speaking, there are 
three theories of the dream. According 
to a belief quite prevalent among savage 
people, the soul or mind leaves the body 
during sleep and travels abroad in the 
world of spirit, meeting with the adven¬ 
tures and experiences which we call a 
dream. It is said that, to the American In¬ 
dian, a dream is as real as his waking ex¬ 
perience. 

A second theory is that of supernatural 
origin. According to this theory, a dream 
is a communication from the other world, 
—a hint which the dreamer does well to 
interpret and heed with care. In Greek 


mythology the gods frequently spoke to 
the heroes in their sleep. At the instiga¬ 
tion of Jupiter Aeneas was warned by 
Mercury in a dream to remain no longer 
at Carthage. In the scriptural story of 
Joseph, the dreamer of dreams, we have 
an excellent illustration of this theory. He 
dreamed that his brothers’ sheaves bowed 
down to his sheaf, thus forecasting the 
time when his brethren bowed themselves 
before the great man of Egypt. The chief 
butler in prison dreamed that he gave 
the king to drink again. This actually 
came to pass. The chief baker dreamed 
that he carried meats on his head and that 
the fowls of the air came and ate of 
them, thus foreshadowing his death. Pha¬ 
raoh dreamed of the seven fat kine eaten up 
by the seven lean ones, and of the seven 
full ears of corn devoured by the seven 
blasted ears. By interpreting this dream, 
Joseph was able to foretell the seven years 
of plenty followed by those of grievous 
famine. 

The third theory of dreams is to the 
effect that a dream is an action of the 
mind produced either by some sort of men¬ 
tal excitement, such as trouble, worry, 
something that one has read, or heard, or 
seen; or else that the dream arises from 
some condition of the body, as cold, hun¬ 
ger, or some other form of bodily dis¬ 
comfort. An imaginative child, who has 
heard or read Indian tales of massacre and 
burning^ not infrequently dreams of pass¬ 
ing through similar scenes. The child’s 
sufferings are, for the time, quite as keen 
as though they were real. Such dreams 
as trying to run against a strong wind, 
leaping from a housetop, and the like, 
are due usually to some uncomfortable po¬ 
sition of the body, or to an overloaded 
stomach. A cold foot may cause one to 
dream that he is tramping through a snow¬ 
drift. Almost everyone dreams, even from 
the earliest infancy, and can draw upon his 
own experience for illustrations. They are 
usually, however, of greater interest to 
himself than to others. 

One of the strangest features of dream¬ 
ing is the immense amount of experience 
that is packed within a few moments. 
Events that would occupy hours of wak- 


DREDGING—DRED SCOTT DECISION 


ing time may be crowded into a few sec¬ 
onds. One falls asleep and dreams of 
traveling for hours, holding long conver¬ 
sations with various persons, passing 
through all sorts of adventures and bodily 
discomforts or pleasures, and awakes to 
find that he has napped but a moment or 
two. Some authorities even go so far as 
to assert that all dreams, however lengthy, 
take place at the very moment of waking; 
but there appears to be no solid founda¬ 
tion for this statement. 

Dredging, the deepening of channels 
and harbors by the removal of loose earth. 
There are two typical kinds of dredging 
machines. The first consists essentially of 
a series of buckets, running on an endless 
chain or belt, such as may be seen in a 
grain elevator, only on a larger scale. As 
the buckets pass around the lower pulley, 
they scoop up earth; as they run over an 
elevated pulley at the other end of the 
circuit, they discharge the earth into a 
scow provided for the purpose of receiving 
it. Huge dredges of this sort are in use in 
digging the Panama Canal. 

A second sort of dredge consists of a 
steam shovel, such as is used for loading 
earth on flat cars. The shovel, which is 
really a huge, metal scoop, has the size 
of a barrel. It is swung on a derrick and 
is worked by steam. It drops to the bottom 
and scrapes up a load of earth. It is then 
elevated by means of a chain and ratchet 
work, and swung around by means of the 
derrick until in position to discharge its 
contents through a hinged bottom into a 
scow as before. Both kinds of dredge are 
mounted on a flat boat constructed for 
the purpose. It carries an engine and a 
supply of fuel. It advances as the work 
progresses and may be taken from place to 
place as its services are needed. Still an¬ 
other kind of dredge may be mentioned. 
A colossal contrivance, used in deepening 
the channel of the Willamette and Colum¬ 
bia rivers, churns up the soil to be removed 
and pumps it up like a mosquito, through 
a forty-inch tube. Mammoth dredges are 
kept at work constantly in the Suez and 
other canals. 

Dred Scott Decision, a celebrated de¬ 
cision of the United States supreme court. 


The case occasioned intense excitement, at 
the time. Briefly stated, the facts are as 
follows. Dred Scott was a negro born 
in Missouri about 1810. He was the slave 
of an army surgeon by the name of Dr. 
Emerson, who took him as a body servant 
with his regiment, first to Rock Island, 
Illinois, and in 1836 to Fort Snelling, 
then in the territory of Iowa, now in Min¬ 
nesota. At Fort Snelling Dred married 
Harriet, a slave in the same family, and 
had two children. Rock Island and Fort 
Snelling were both in free territory. In 
1838 the doctor returned to St. Louis, 
taking Dred with him. A lawyer, Francis 
P. Blair, an opponent of slavery, learned 
of the facts in Dred’s case, and encouraged 
him to bring suit for assault and battery. 
It was not alleged that he had been subject 
to especially cruel treatment, only that 
he had been coerced. The argument of 
Dred’s lawyer was that, by residence in 
free territory, Dred had become a free 
man and a citizen of the United States, 
entitled to the protection of its courts. 
The contention of the lawyer on the other 
side was that Dred was a mere chattel, 
like a horse, incapable of appearing in 
court, or of being represented by a lawyer. 
The case was taken from one court to an¬ 
other. A decision was handed down finally 
by the United States supreme court by a 
vote of seven to two, on March 6, 1857, 
giving judgment against Dred, thus decid¬ 
ing practically that an owner could take 
his slaves into any part of the United States 
and hold them. In the absence of con¬ 
gressional action to the contrary, this was 
actually the law of the United States un¬ 
til set .aside by the thirteenth constitu¬ 
tional amendment in December 18, 1865. 
Dred, it may be said in passing, was pur¬ 
chased by friends and given his freedom. 

Although the decision led to no coloniz¬ 
ing of slaves on free soil, the feeling was 
intense. Quiet people on both sides of 
Mason and Dixon’s line were set to think¬ 
ing. The more rabid pro-? lavery leaders 
were jubilant; the anti-slavery leaders 
were rendered desperate. If acquiesced in, 
this decision cut the ground completely 
from under the new Republican party, 
which had been organized tr prevent the 


DRESDEN—DRONE 


extension of slavery into free territory. 
If it meant to obey the supreme court 
decision, the Republican party had no ex¬ 
cuse for continued being. Therefore, Lin¬ 
coln declared that the decision must be 
changed by a change in the court. With 
even truer insight, James Russell Lowell 
wrote, “Have you seen the Dred Scott de¬ 
cision? I am glad. Now we shall see 
where the stouter lance-shafts are grown, 
North or South.” 

See Taney. 

Dresden, drez'den, the capital of Sax- . 
ony. It is situated on the Elbe 387 feet 
above sea level. It is not without commer¬ 
cial importance. Dresden claims first place 
among North German cities as an art cen¬ 
ter. The Dresden picture gallery, fostered 
by a long line of Saxon princes and prime 
ministers, ranks, both as to building and 
contents, with the first galleries in the 
world. Among other treasures is the price¬ 
less Sistine Madonna. Were it not that a 
large part of the people, as in every Euro¬ 
pean city, are in poverty, the galleries, 
theaters, parks, palaces, and equipages 
would persuade the tourist that Dresden is 
a paradise of leisure-loving people. The 
present population is about 395,000. 

Dress. See Clothing. 

Dreyfus, Alfred (1859-), a lieutenant 
in the French army. He was born in 
Alsace in 1859 and came of a wealthy 
Jewish family. In 1894 he was arrested 
on a charge of conveying valuable mili¬ 
tary information to the German govern¬ 
ment. He was tried by secret court-martial 
and was sentenced to a public degrada¬ 
tion from office and imprisonment for life. 
Subsequent information leaked out which 
incriminated another officer by the name of 
Esterhazy, who had taken an active part 
in the conviction of Dreyfus. Esterhazy 
was tried behind closed doors and was ac¬ 
quitted, but the public was convinced of 
his guilt. Zola, the novelist, came out in 
an open letter denouncing the government 
officials. The novelist was arrested on a 
charge of libel and was condemned to pay 
a fine and undergo imprisonment. The 
people of Paris were excited to the verge 
of revolution. The Anti-Dreyfusites 
shouted and urged that the Jews must be 


put down and the honor of the army up¬ 
held; the Dreyfusites denounced bureau¬ 
cracy and demanded justice at any cost. 
Dreyfus was given a second trial in 1899 
and was condemned to light imprisonment 
in a fortress for ten years. Even this sen¬ 
tence was so at variance with popular 
opinion that President Loubet granted the 
prisoner a full pardon and set him at 
liberty. In the meantime Esterhazy had 
left the country. The Dreyfus affair was 
a burning question for five years and 
caused infinite trouble to three successive 
presidents, six ministries, and nine minis¬ 
ters of war. There is little doubt that 
someone gave out treasonable information. 
It is the general belief that Lieutenant 
Dreyfus was made a scapegoat. The vir¬ 
tual acquittal of the latter is regarded as a 
popular rebuke of military aristocracy. See 
Zola. 

Dromedary, drum'e-da-ry, a kind of 
camel. The term is derived from a Greek 
word meaning a runner. Like our words 
race-horse and saddle-horse, it has a rela¬ 
tive meaning and may be applied to any 
camel trained to carry riders with speed. 
More properly, however, the dromedary is 
a variety of the one-humped Arabian camel 
noted for lightness of build and fleetness 
of foot. A well bred dromedary will trot 
nine miles an hour for a day and a night 
without signs of distress and, in case of 
need, can carry a messenger six hundred 
miles in five days with no other refresh¬ 
ment than a few quarts of water from a 
leathern water-bag and a few pounds of 
cake made of barley meal and powdered 
dates. The natural gait of a dromedary is 
a swinging trot. Both feet on one side are 
moved at the same time, then the feet on 
the other side are swung forward, after 
the manner of a pacing horse. The jolt 
is less than that of an ordinary camel; but 
it is terribly rough, and can be endured 
only by a practiced rider. If forced from 
his untiring pace into a gallop, the drome¬ 
dary is soon exhausted. Consult the opening 
chapters of Lew Wallace’s Ben Hur for a 
picture of the “Wise Men of the East” 
traveling and camping with their drome¬ 
daries. See Camel. 

Drone. See Bee. 


DROPSY—DRUGS 


Dropsy, in medical science, an accu¬ 
mulation of the serum or colorless portion 
of the blood under the skin, generally in 
various local parts of the body. Local 
dropsy is known as dropsy of the chest, of 
the brain, of the eyelids, etc. It is thought 
to be due to insufficient heart action in the 
collection of the blood, or to obstructions in 
the veins which retard the return of the 
blood to the heart. The accumulation of 
watery liquid is frequently so great that a 
physician is able to give temporary relief 
by tapping the affected locality and draw¬ 
ing the water off. It is a disease that has 
as yet shown little inclination to yield 4 to 
medical treatment. See Medicine; Dis¬ 
ease. 

Drowning, death from being under wa¬ 
ter. In trying to breathe, a drowning per¬ 
son fills his lungs with water. Death 
ensues, not on account of the water, but 
from suffocation, that is, the drowning 
person cannot obtain air. Struggling 
ceases in from four to six minutes. If a 
person has not been under water more than 
ten or twenty minutes, an effort should be 
made to set up artificial breathing. The 
patient should be laid face downward on 
a roll of cloth, or anything that will elevate 
the chest above the level of the face. This 
will permit a portion of the water to run 
out. The patient should then be rolled 
over on the side to induce an artificial 
gasp, and rolled promptly back on the 
breast again. This should be done every 
four or five seconds, that is, twelve or 
fifteen times per minute. The weight of 
the body on the chest drives the air and 
water out. Turning the body on its side 
removes the pressure, and air enters the 
chest. The operation should be kept up 
indefinitely. Instances have been known 
where life reappeared after several hours 
of work of this sort. In the meantime, 
others should make every effort to remove 
wet clothing and to dry the body, particu¬ 
larly the arms and legs, and wrap them in 
warm, dry blankets. See Swimming. 

Drugs, a general term covering all ma¬ 
terials whatever entering into medicines. 
The history of the drug trade is really 
the history of medicine. For long cen¬ 
turies a struggle was carried on between 


the advocates of vegetable remedies and 
the advocates of minerals—between sim¬ 
ples, as balsams, gums, resins, roots, and 
leaves, on the one hand, and chemicals, 
as mercury, borax, salt, sulphur, lead, 
soda, and lime, on the other. See article 
on Chemistry. At one time the pharma¬ 
cist or druggist was chiefly a gatherer and 
curer of such plants as dandelion, boneset, 
sassafras, ginseng, snakeroot, and the like. 

The early American druggist carried 
and dealt in many articles now considered 
a part of the hardware trade, as nails, 
glass, putty, paint, and oils. The list of 
drugs now recognized by the medical trade, 
the materia me die a of the pharmacist; in¬ 
cludes over a thousand titles. It is safe 
to say that the druggist deals in a greater 
number of articles, representing more lo-' 
calities and more remote parts of the 
earth, than any other business man of his 
acquaintance. 

The discovery of America added a sur¬ 
prisingly large number of drugs to the 
market. The old chroniclers make much 
of the wonderful herbs and barks of Amer¬ 
ica, such as tobacco, quinine, sassafras, 
sarsaparilla, jalap, ipecac, etc. Stone oil, 
or petroleum, at first so rare as to be used 
only in medicines and as a liniment, was 
found first in Virginia and was introduced 
to the world as an American remedy. Vase¬ 
line and a large number of petroleum prod¬ 
ucts owe their use to American ingenuity 
and enterprise. 

Fifty years ago the druggist compound¬ 
ed most of his medicines at great expense 
of time and labor. Today about 8,000 
patent medicines and remedies, prepared 
in manufactories, are listed in the whole¬ 
sale druggist’s catalog. So far as com¬ 
pounding goes, the retail druggist now 
confines his efforts to filling prescriptions. 

One of the modern devices appreciated 
by those so unfortunate as to need medi¬ 
cines is the administering of nauseous and 
bitter drugs in sugar-coated pills, gela¬ 
tine capsules, and tablets. Over five hun¬ 
dred varieties of the latter are on the 
American market. Candv is the direct 
outgrowth of sugai-coating pills. The 
druggist used sweets to make his medicine 
agreeable and found in time that the sweets 


DRUIDS—DRUSES 


gave quite as much satisfaction without 
medicine. From the latest statistics, it ap¬ 
pears that 276 manufacturing pharmacists, 
in the United States alone, employ 6,000 
people and turn out about $30,000,000 
worth of preparations a year. In 1906 
the American jobbers imported drugs to 
the amount of $16,414,868.37. 

Druids, an order of priests among the 
ancient Britons and Gauls. Little is 
known of them. The best account is 
found in the sixth book of Caesar’s Gal¬ 
lic War. Like the Hebrew tribe of Levi, 
they were exempt from taxes and military 
service. They practiced their rites in the 
recesses of oak groves and held the mistle¬ 
toe in reverence. Some have tried to pic¬ 
ture the Druids as corresponding to the 
Magi or wise men of the Persians, conjec¬ 
turing that the rites of the Magi and of 
the Druids originated in a common source. 
The dolmens and circles of stones, such 
as are found at Stonehenge, were formerly 
considered druidical remains; but they are 
now thought to be the work of a stone 
age preceding the Celts. Among much 
that is misty we are certain of a few facts. 
The druidic priesthood withstood the Ro¬ 
mans with fanatic zeal, reminding the 
reader of Tecumseh’s brother, the prophet 
who brought on the battle of Tippecanoe. 
At all events, the Romans found it nec¬ 
essary to hunt out the Druids, cut down 
their sacred groves, and exterminate them 
before they could reduce Gaul and Britain 
to anything like quiet. The Isle of Mona, 
now Anglesea, was the headquarters—the 
sacred seat of druidism—in the British 
Isles. See Boadicea; Celts. 

Drum, a musical instrument played by 
percussion or pounding. The ordinary 
drum consists of a wooden or metal cyl¬ 
inder, shaped like a cheese hoop. A cir¬ 
cular sheet of parchment, called a head, is 
stretched taut over each end, and held in 
place by a hoop. Cords interlacing from 
hoop to hoop serve to regulate the tight¬ 
ness of the drumheads. The tighter the 
vellum, the higher the note. The tam¬ 
bourine, the timbrel, and the drum are all 
of Eastern origin; the former two are 
played by the fingers. The drum is played 
with sticks. A snare drum is played by 


two sticks on the same end. It is a reg¬ 
ular accompaniment of the fife. The 
large bass drum is sometimes called the 
Turkish drum. It is played by two pad¬ 
ded sticks, one at each end. It is a reg¬ 
ular feature of a military band, and has 
its place in the orchestra. The kettledrum 
used in the orchestra is a hemispherical 
metal basin covered with vellum and rest¬ 
ing usually in a tripod. It may be tight¬ 
ened by screws. Kettledrums are played 
in pairs—one being tuned a fourth below 
the other. See Orchestra. 

Drummond, Henry (1851-1897), a 
Scottish geologist and author. He was 
born near Sterling. His education was re¬ 
ceived at the University of Edinburgh, and 
at that of Tubingen, Germany. In 1887 
he was appointed lecturer on natural sci¬ 
ence at the Free Church College of Glas¬ 
gow, and several years later was made pro¬ 
fessor of natural science in the same insti¬ 
tution. He visited America during one of 
his vacations, lecturing in the United States 
and in Canada, although the real object of 
his visit was a geological expedition to the 
Rocky Mountains. He made explorations 
also in central Africa, searching for rare 
forms of animal life. Mr. Drummond 
possessed remarkable power over young 
men, and worked extensively among them, 
especially in colleges and universities, his 
great gift seeming to be in transmitting to 
them something of his own devotion to 
high ideals. He lectured in many English 
speaking countries, making two later visits 
to America for that purpose, and becoming 
very popular in both the United States and 
Canada. Among his published works, 
Natural Law in the Spiritual World, an at¬ 
tempt to reconcile science and religion, 
stands first. It has run through thirty- 
three editions and has been translated into 
several languages. Other works are 
Tropical Africa, The Greatest Thing in 
the World, Pax Vobiscum, and Ascent of 
Man. 

Druses, dru'zez, a sect of people inhab¬ 
iting the southern part of the Lebanon 
Mountains and the region south of Damas¬ 
cus. They number about 80,000. They are 
described as a people of light complexion 
and active, warlike habits. Where they 


DRY FARMING 


came from no one knows. They have been 
known since the eleventh century. They 
have learned the Arabic language and for¬ 
gotten their own. They dress and live 
simply. They use neither wine nor tobac¬ 
co. They tell the truth, but only to each 
other. They believe in one god so differ¬ 
ent from a person that he cannot be de¬ 
scribed. They make no attempt to un¬ 
fold his nature. Aside from the priests 
who live in monasteries, the people be¬ 
lieve, but take no part in any act of re¬ 
ligion or worship whatever. Prayer they 
regard as an impertinent interference with 
the Creator. Among the Turks they so far 
comply as to bow with the face toward 
Mecca; and among Christians, rather than 
give offense, they suffer themselves to be 
sprinkled with holy water. Though over¬ 
run by the Turks, they have been a tur¬ 
bulent people and have given trouble, not 
infrequently maintaining independence in 
their mountain fastnesses. As late as 1860 
a feud broke out between them and their 
neighbors, a Christian sect called Maron- 
ites. It is estimated that not less than 
10,000 of the latter were massacred. As 
a matter of information, the Druses should 
be held in mind. Like the Poles in Rus¬ 
sia and the Bohemians in Austria, they 
are an unassimilated element, and are sure 
to be heard from when the end of the 
Turkish Empire arrives. See Syria; Tur¬ 
key. 

Dry Farming, a recent term applied to 
scientific treatment of soil under semi-arid 
conditions. There is a vast amount of rich 
land in the Great Plains region and west¬ 
ward that lacks water only to become as 
fertile as the Mississippi Valley. There 
are in New Mexico, Wyoming, Montana, 
Utah, Colorado, Idaho, not including sec¬ 
tions of all the states situated near the 
hundredth meridian, over 80,000,000 acres 
of naturally fertile, but dry land that ' 
needs water to become fertile. It is esti¬ 
mated that irrigation projects, present and 
future, may convert a possible ten per cent 
of this land into agricultural land of high 
value. While not belittling the efforts of 
those interested in irrigation, intelligent 
farmers are of the opinion that more ef¬ 
fort and money should be expended in 


making people acquainted with methods of 
dry farming. By proper treatment of the 
soil it is considered practicable to raise 
a crop each year wherever the yearly rain¬ 
fall is not less than thirteen inches; and 
crops each alternate year where the an¬ 
nual rainfall is not less than ten inches. 

Dry farming is not an attempt to train 
crops to grow with little moisture, for Na¬ 
ture’s demands are fixed. The roots of the 
wheat plant need to imbibe a fixed amount 
of water to produce a given yield of straw 
and of grain. Dry farming addresses it¬ 
self to the problem of saving the rain that 
falls and of seeing to it that the roots of 
useful plants, not weeds, get it. Under 
the leadership of Mr. H. W. Campbell, 
now of Lincoln, Nebraska, common sense 
experiments have been carried on for over 
twenty-five years. Mr. Campbell began 
his work on a farm in South Dakota. He 
became famous as a worker in farmers’ in¬ 
stitutes, and was employed by the Bur¬ 
lington Railway to establish demonstration 
farms along its lines of road in the semi- 
arid region. By following a few careful¬ 
ly thought out principles of soil tillage, 
he was able to raise abundant crops of 
wheat, oats, potatoes, beans, peas, millet, 
sugar beets, and kaffir corn; while the 
crops in fields across the road from his, 
having precisely the same soil, but farmed 
by ordinary methods, suffered from drouth 
to such a degree that they were not worth 
harvesting. The difference between forty 
bushels of wheat and failure, and between 
sixty bushels of oats and nothing, right 
out in the open, without fertilizers and 
without other moisture than rainfall, was 
sufficiently striking to arrest attention and 
change agricultural methods in this region. 

Mr. Campbell’s methods have been test¬ 
ed and approved by practical farmers and 
agricultural stations. They have been 
found as effective as they are simple. They 
require horses, implements, unceasing in¬ 
dustry, and vigilance. The main princi¬ 
ples of dry farming are: 

1. Deep plowing —not less than sev¬ 
en inches. This is to allow the rain, when 
it does fall, to enter the soil and not run 
away. The problem is the very opposite 
of drainage. 


DRY ROT 


2. Subsoil packing. Continued culti¬ 
vation wifli a disk-harrow tends to pack 
the soil three inches below the surface. A 
disk with an outer edge so shaped that it 
acts like a wedge to force the soil par¬ 
ticles together has been found to work 
well. The object of subsoil packing is to 
keep the water from evaporating. Mr. 
Campbell was started thinking by notic¬ 
ing that the tracks made in his fields by 
wagon wheels and the footprints of his 
team retained moisture and gave an in¬ 
creased yield. 

3. Surface cultivation. The rule is to 
plow as soon as the crop is off and disk 
after every shower. The idea is to turn 
the moist surface into the soil bed and pre¬ 
vent evaporation. Gardeners who get out 
in the early morning and hoe the dew into 
the soil find their reward even in regions 
not so dry. 

4. Frequent disking even in the dryest 
of weather. This is to create and main¬ 
tain a loose surface covering of dust. It is 
found that dust, by breaking up the capil¬ 
larity of the soil, is one of the most ef¬ 
fective mulches known. Ground covered 
with dust does not dry out readily. If 
the dust be scraped aside, the soil beneath 
will be found to be as moist as though it 
had been protected by litter or leaves. 
After crops are sown the disk is abandoned 
for a toothed tool, a horse hoe, or the 
Campbell surface cultivator. It is so es¬ 
sential to keep up the dust blanket that 
even at the risk of uprooting a chance stalk 
of grain, farmers cross and recross their 
growing grain fields all through the early 
summer, stirring the soil especially after 
a shower, that a layer of dust may be 
formed to prevent the escape of precious 
moisture. 

5. Eradication of weeds. Inasmuch as 
a growing plant imbibes moisture through 
its roots and allows it to escape through 
its leaves, it follows that weeds are waste¬ 
ful of water, the dry farm’s chief treas¬ 
ure. Garden, orchard, potato field, and 
all fields must be kept free from wasteful 
weeds. 

6. In regions having from ten to thir¬ 
teen inches of rainfall, it is found best to 

summer fallow each second year. The 
11-29 


ground is plowed to admit water. A dust 
mulch is maintained to prevent the escape 
of water. Weeds are not allowed to pilfer 
the supply. A second season finds the soil 
with a store of moisture sufficient to raise 
a crop. 

To meet conditions requiring one-half 
of the land to lie idle each year, the gov¬ 
ernment permits homesteaders to take a 
half section of public land in regions of 
scant rainfall. As stated, men, teams, im¬ 
plements, and untiring industry are requi¬ 
sites to succeed in dry farming, but the 
results already attained mark a signal tri¬ 
umph for American agriculture. 

It remains to be noted that Mr. Camp¬ 
bell’s success and reputation are due to 
seeking the cause of as simple a matter as 
the increased productivity of a wagon track. 
One of his first discoveries was that a 
broad track like that of a heavy roller did 
not produce the desired result. The track, 
he found, needed to be so narrow that 
earth falling from the sides formed a dust 
mulch. In other words, he discovered that 
subsoil packing and a dust cover, not sur¬ 
face rolling and packing, were what was 
needed to hold the moisture to be drawn 
upon by the growing plant. 

Dry Rot, a decay likely to attack sea¬ 
soned timber or dead trees. It is due to the 
growth of peculiar plants of the fungi 
order. The branching threads, not un¬ 
like those of bread mold, penetrate the 
fibers of the wood and absorb its substance. 
Not infrequently a timber in a building 
or bridge, apparently sound, is found to be 
a mere shell full of crumbling white, yel¬ 
low, or red dust. Notwithstanding the 
name, dry rot is more prevalent in the moist 
climate of Europe than in America. Oak 
is especially subject to its attacks. The 
fungus cannot grow in a timber kept per¬ 
fectly dry. Soaking in creosote and paint¬ 
ing before the spores get a footing are pre¬ 
ventive measures. Building inspectors test 
for dry rot with a long awl or probe. 
The bones of living animals are some¬ 
times attacked by a fungus growth, sim¬ 
ilar in its powdery effect to dry rot. 
Figuratively, and with reference to char¬ 
acter, a person who preserves a fair out¬ 
ward appearance while inwardly 'losing 


DRYAD—DRYDEN 


strength, courage, and initiative is said to 
be affected with the dry rot. 

Dryad, or Hamadryad, ham'a-dri-ad, 
in Greek mythology, a wood nymph whose 
life was supposed to be bound up in that 
of her tree. The wanton destruction of a 
tree was therefore regarded as an impious 
act, to be punished by the vengeance of 
the gods. Erisichthon once felled a tree 
whose dryad was beloved by Ceres. As a' 
punishment, he was afflicted with insatia¬ 
ble hunger. He ate everything he could 
get, selling all his possessions and his own 
daughter for food. At last he consumed 
his own limbs, and began eating his body 
before death released him. The dryads 
were partners of the god Pan in the dance. 
See Pan. 

Dryden, dri'den, John (1631-1700), 
an English poet. He was of Puritan an¬ 
cestry and was educated at Cambridge. 
The Restoration took place just as he was 
about to enter active life. Doubtless he 
had expected preferment from influential 
relatives who now came into disfavor. 
Dryden seems to have shifted to the win¬ 
ning side. He espoused the royal cause and 
published an ode of welcome to the return¬ 
ing king. He married an earl’s daughter 
and enjoyed royal patronage. He became 
poet laureate, a position which he held 
until the Revolution of 1688. The reviv¬ 
al of the drama seemed to offer a lucra¬ 
tive field to a professional author, and 
Dryden devoted himself with great energy 
to the stage. He selected popular sub¬ 
jects, aimed to treat them in a popular 
manner, and sought favor by prefixing to 
most of his works prefaces in praise of 
those in power. After the Revolution, 
having lost favor with royalty, Dryden 
lived an obscure life, suffering from pover¬ 
ty, ill health, and the hatred and malice 
of his enemies. His energy, however, was 
unimpaired. During his last years, he 
produced translations from the Latin of 
Juvenal and Virgil. He died in 1700. 
While his family were preparing to bury 
him as their poverty could afford, a large 
subscription was raised. His body was 
borne in state to Westminster and laid be¬ 
tween the tombs of Chaucer and Cowley. 
In religion and politics Dryden may be 


regarded as the opposite of Milton, up¬ 
holding Tory and Catholic views as Mil- 
ton upheld those of Whig and Puritan. 
Dryden wrote twenty-eight plays and won 
the reputation of being the first drama¬ 
tist of his time. In his early plays he is 
the representative of the change from the 
Elizabethan drama to that formed on 
French models. Dryden’s plays were writ¬ 
ten to please the popular taste. They are 
gross and immoral, and present no fine 
delineation of character—no humor which 
is worthy the name. Dryden himself said, 
“I confess my chief endeavors are to de¬ 
light the age in which I live. If the hu¬ 
mor of this be for low comedy, small ac¬ 
cidents, and raillery, I will force my gen¬ 
ius to obey it.” All for Love is probably 
the best of these dramas. 

Dryden’s satires, while most of them are 
controversial and therefore fail of perma¬ 
nent favor, are of a much higher rank 
than his dramas. They are written usual¬ 
ly in the rhymed couplet, or heroic coup¬ 
let, as it is called. Absalom and A chit o- 
phel is an allegory in defense of the king. 
His Hind and Panther is another alle¬ 
gory written in defense of the Catholic 
church. The hind of spotless white is the 
Roman Church. The panther ready to 
spring is the English Church established 
by Henry VIII. The Independent or Pu¬ 
ritan church is a bear; the Quaker, a quak¬ 
ing hare; the Baptist, a bristling boar. 
Dryden’s Alexander’s Feast, an ode for St. 
Cecilia’s Day, written in old age, is called 
the noblest ode in the English language. 
Dryden’s prose, in the form of essays, 
prefaces, or dedications prefixed to his po¬ 
etical works, is admirable. It is critical 
in character, in style easy, animated, and 
vigorous. 

Dryden is considered the forerunner of 
Pope, Addison, and the other classical 
writers of the Queen Anne age in litera¬ 
ture. 

Here is a handful of coins from Dryden’s 
mint: 

As sure as a gun. 

A green old age. 

None but the brave deserves the fair. 

Men are but children of a larger growth. 

Love either finds equality or makes it. 

Beware the fury of a patient man. 


DUAL ALLIANCE—DUBUQUE 


Ill habits gather by unseen degrees,— 

As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas. 

SAID OF DRYDEN. 

By Dryden we were taught to think naturally 
and express forcibly.—Dr. Johnson. 

Dryden was incomparably the most distin¬ 
guished author of his age; but it was not an 
imaginative age, therefore not an age favorable 
to the truest and most lasting kind of poetry. 
In prose he shines, and in his historical and 
critical judgments of literature he stands forth 
as the most commanding literary personality of 
his age.—Gayley and Young. 

His plays, excepting a few scenes, are utterly 
disfigured by vice or folly or both. His transla¬ 
tions appear too much the offspring of haste 
and hunger; even his fables are ill-chosen tales 
conveyed in an incorrect though spirited versi¬ 
fication. Yet amidst this great number of loose 
productions, the refuse of our language, there 
are found some small pieces, his “Ode to St. 
Cecilia,” the greater part of “Absalom and 
Achitophel,” and a few more which discover so 
great genius, such richness of expression, such 
pomp and vanity of numbers, that they leave us 
equally full of regret and indignation on account 
of the inferiority, or rather, great absurdity of 
his other writings.—David Hume. 

I admire Dryden’s talents and genius highly; 
but his is not a poetical genius. The only qual¬ 
ities I can find in Dryden that are essentially 
poetical are a certain ardor and impetuosity of 
mind with an excellent ear. . . . There is not a 
single image from nature in the whole of his 
works.—William Wordsworth. 

Mr. St. John, afterwards Lord Bolingbroke, 
happening to pay a morning visit to Dryden, 
whom he always respected, found him in an un¬ 
usual agitation of spirits, even to a trembling. On 
inquiring the cause—“I have been up all night,” 
replied the old bard; “my musical friends made 
me promise to write them an ode for the Feast 
of St. Cecilia; I have been so struck with the 
subject which occurred to me, that I could not 
leave it till I had completed it—here it is, fin¬ 
ished at one sitting.”—Warton. 

His (Dryden’s) indelicacy was like the 
forced impudence of a bashful man. Walter 
Scott. 

Without either creative imagination or any 
power of pathos, he is in argument, in satire, and 
in declamatory magnificence, the greatest of our 
poets.—G. L. Craik. 

Dryden’s faults are numberless, and so are 
his beauties.—Cowper. 

Dual Alliance. See Triple Alliance. 
Dublin, the metropolis and capital city 
of Ireland. It is situated on the eastern 
coast at the mouth of the Liffey River. 
With reference to the Irish Sea it is directly 
opposite Liverpool, from which it is lo8 


miles distant. The Liffey, spanned by nu¬ 
merous fine bridges, flows through the cen¬ 
ter of the city from west to east. Below 
the last of nine bridges the river is crowded 
with ships. The central, official, and com¬ 
mercial part of the city is essentially Eng¬ 
lish. The Bank, Trinity College, various 
government buildings, the names of the 
public squares, streets, and bridges, and 
a lofty monument to Lord Nelson, the 
hero of Trafalgar, all bear witness to 
British rule. This part of the city is 
adorned with fine edifices, green, well-kept 
squares, and numerous statues of public 
men, as Burke, Goldsmith, O’Connell, 
Moore, Grattan, and William III. The 
custom house is a handsome building, a 
city block in size. It has lofty porches and 
doors. It is adorned with statues of 
Plenty, Industry, Mercury, and Neptune. 
The Four Courts, or Hall of Justice is 
the most striking structure in Ireland. 
Phoenix Park, containing the residence of 
the lord lieutenant, is considered one of the 
most beautiful parks in Europe. The vis¬ 
itor who expects to see an Irish city is 
somewhat surprised to find the best part of 
Dublin occupied by memorials erected by 
a governing foreign element to please, not 
the people, but themselves; while the na¬ 
tive laboring population, speaking in a 
general way, occupies a vast encircling sec¬ 
tion of humble, not to say, squalid homes 
and muddy streets. Of late the Catholic 
or native element has had a better chance. 
The Roman Catholic University, supported 
by voluntary contributions, is prospering. 
No less than fourteen imposing church 
edifices have been erected by the Catholics 
to take the place of poverty-stricken build¬ 
ings. At one time famous for weaves of 
woolen goods and fine linen, Dublin has 
declined in importance as a manufacturing 
city. It is still noted for Irish poplins, and 
is a brewing and distilling center. The 
shipping is confined chiefly to exports of 
agricultural products, and imports of 
groceries and hardware. The supplies re¬ 
quired by the city itself are a large item. 
The present population is about 394,528. 
See Ireland. 

Dubuque, du-buk', a manufacturing city 
of Iowa, advantageously situated on and at 


DU CHAILLU—DUCK 


the foot of picturesque bluffs overlooking 
the Mississippi River. Dubuque has a 
large trade in agricultural products and is 
the center of the zinc and lead mining 
industries of the Northwest. It has excel¬ 
lent facilities for trade, being situated on 
the Burlington, the Chicago Great West¬ 
ern, the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul, 
and the Illinois Central Railroads, having 
steamboat communication with other river 
cities, and having three bridges connecting 
it with the opposite shore. Its manu¬ 
factures include flour, bakery products, mil¬ 
linery, clothing, boots and shoes, leather, 
toys, pearl buttons, brooms, furniture, hard¬ 
ware, barrels, bricks, lumber, farming 
implements, wagons and carriages. There 
are meat-packing establishments, iron and 
brass foundries, * breweries, and enamel 
works. The business portion of the city 
is compactly built at the foot of the bluff. 
In the residence portion, the streets, rising 
one above another, present an attractive ap¬ 
pearance. The city has a handsome United 
States Government building, a public li¬ 
brary, and several hospitals and charitable 
institutions. Besides an adequate public 
school system, there are several Roman 
Catholic academfies and colleges, a Ger¬ 
man Presbyterian Theological School,- a 
Lutheran Seminary, and the Iowa Institute 
of Science and Art. Its population in 1910 
was 38,494. 

Du Chaillu, dii sha-yii', Paul Belloni 

(1835-1903), a noted traveler and author. 
He was born at Paris and died at St. Pe¬ 
tersburg. His father was a merchant in 
the French settlement on the Gabun, West 
Africa. Young Paul was educated at the 
Tesuit mission. While quite a young lad 
he delighted in excursions into the region 
surrounding his father’s trading station. 
His great enjoyment was the study of nat¬ 
ural history. At various times he stuffed 
2,000 specimens of birds. In 1853 he 
came to this country. Later he became a 
naturalized citizen of the United States. 
The members of the Philadelphia Academy 
of Natural Sciences became so interested in 
his tales of the jungle and its inhabitants 
that he was provided with means to ex¬ 
plore the unknown region lying on the 
equator. So Du Chaillu returned to Africa 


and spent four years traveling alone over 
8,000 miles. On his return he published 
Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial 
Africa. It was a treasure of scientific in¬ 
formation. His accounts of gorillas and 
dwarfs were received with suspicion; but 
subsequent explorations have confirmed the 
truth of Du Chaillu’s statements. In 1863 
he started on a second expedition, the re¬ 
sults of which were published in A Journey 
to Ashangoland. Other books, written 
especially for young readers, are My Apingi 
Kingdom, The Country of the Dwarfs, Lost 
in the Jungle, Wild Life under the Equa¬ 
tor, and Stories of the Gorilla Country. 
In 1881 appeared The Land of the Mid¬ 
night Sun, the result of several years’ trav¬ 
el and observation in northern Scandinavia 
and Lapland. A later work, The Viking 
Age, describes Norse antiquities discovered 
in mounds, cairns, and bogs of Scandinavia. 
Pie discloses a state of civilization much 
more advanced than European writers 
have hitherto conceded. Lie maintained 
that the Teutonic people that conquered 
Pmgland was not of Anglo-Saxon, but of 
Viking, that is to say, Scandinavian blood, 
akin to the Normans. See Gorilla; 
Dwarf. 

Duck, a stout, plain-woven, canvas-like 
fabric, made of either linen or cotton. 
Duck is of various weights and styles of 
finish, is bleached or unbleached, dyed 
in plain colors or printed. In true duck, 
two warp threads are laid together in the 
loom and woven as one. Duck, as retail¬ 
ed, is usually about twenty-eight inches 
wide, but for manufacturers’ purposes, it 
is made as wide as 208 inches. Duck in its 
different qualities is put to a variety of 
uses. Heavy, unbleached duck is used for 
awnings, sails, tents, stack covers, etc.; 
bleached duck for men’s summer clothes, 
women’s and children’s suits, and waiters’ 
coats and aprons. Fancy striped duck is 
used for tents and awnings. Elastic linen 
duck is used as an extra stiffening in men’s 
coats. 

Duck, a swimming bird allied to the 
goose and swan. Three toes, extending 
forward, are webbed; the fourth toe is free. 
The edges of the bill are furnished with 
coarse serrations for holding food, or else 


DUCK 


fine ones for straining food out of water. 
Like all birds, and waterfowl in particu¬ 
lar, the duck presses oil with the bill from 
a gland situated above the tail and dresses 
its feathers with care. Unless ruffled by 
the wind a duck’s coat is water-proof. 
Ducks are birds of strong, swift flight. 
They are found all over the world. In the 
winter season they betake themselves south¬ 
ward and northward toward equatorial re¬ 
gions, at least far enough to insure open 
water. In the spring they return to nest. 
The typical duck’s nest is saucer-shaped. It 
is started with coarse material and is fin¬ 
ished with the finest down from the breast. 
When the duck leaves her eggs she protects 
them with a coverlet of feathers. 

There are not less than forty well known 
species in North America. They may be 
classified under three heads: fish-eating 
ducks, pond and river ducks, and sea ducks. 
The most prominent members of the fish¬ 
eating group are the sheldrake and hooded 
merganser. They live on fish. They pur¬ 
sue and capture their prey under water. 
The serrations of the bill enable them to 
hold a fish almost as well as an otter. 
Both the sheldrake and the merganser nest 
in hollow stumps or in holes in a bank. 
They prefer a wooded region. 

The most prominent species of the river 
and pond ducks is the old time mallard. 
It ranges throughout the northern two- 
thirds of the world. The male has a glos¬ 
sy greenish or bluish-black head and 
throat, with a white ring around the neck. 
The breast is clad in rich chestnut; the 
belly in grayish white, marked with wavy 
black lines. The metallic green, pearl 
gray, and purple of the drake make him a 
handsome fellow, indeed. The duck is a 
modest looking lady dressed in brown 
streaked with black. The mallard is the 
finest of all ducks. It is considered the 
ancestor of nearly all our tame varieties. 
The shoveler or spoon-bill has a broad, 
spoon-shaped bill. It is provided with a 
strainer like that of a whale. Its plumage 
is almost as handsome as that of the mal¬ 
lard. It dislikes salt water. 

The best of the small ducks of this group 
are the green-winged, the blue-winged, and 
cinnamon teal. They are easily approached, 


but fly with speed. Teal coming down 
the wind afford the hunter a difficult shot. 
It is believed that the teal is capable of 
flying at the rate of 100 miles an hour. 
Ordinarily teal are considered desirable 
game birds. In the northwest, however, es¬ 
pecially along the Columbia River, they 
gorge themselves with carrion salmon, un¬ 
til they are worthless for the table. The 
black duck belongs to this group. The 
most beautiful of all American ducks are 
the pintail and wood duck. They rival the 
Chinese mandarin duck in beauty of plum¬ 
age. The wood drake wears a glorious 
combination of green, blue, purple, chest¬ 
nut, white, buff, and black. This species 
not only perches in trees, but nests at an 
elevation of from ten to forty feet above 
the ground. When the young are ready to 
leave the nest, the parent bird conveys them 
one by one in her bill to the water’s edge. 

The third group of ducks, the sea ducks, 
includes the scaup, scoter, golden-eye, har¬ 
lequin, and old squaw. The redhead and 
the canvas-back are familiar inland as well. 
The canvas-back is a favorite table duck. 
In the autumn, it feeds in the streams and 
marshes of the West. Its favorite food is 
a bulbous growth of eelgrass. The canvas- 
back dives down into the water, seizes the 
eelgrass in its beak, pulls it up, bites off 
the bulb, and lets the stalk float away. The 
plant on which it feeds is erroneously 
called the wild celery, a plant to which it 
has no relationship. The traditional winter 
home of the canvas-back is Chesapeake 
Bay. The most noted of all the sea ducks 
is the eider-duck. It breeds far to the 
north. It excels all other ducks in lining 
its nest with an immense quantity of fine, 
downy feathers. The Eskimos gather these 
feathers for sale, being careful, however, 
not to disturb the ducks during the actual 
hatching season. About six or seven nests 
yield a pound of feathers. 

Domestic ducks are too well known to 
require description. As stated, most breeds 
are derived from the handsome mallard. 
In eggs, feathers, and dressed meat, the 
American poultryman realizes about $7,- 
000,000 a year from ducks. The duck is 
the most common fowl of China. 

See Bird ; Goose ; Swan ; Poultry. 


DUCKBILL—DUEL 


Duckbill, or Platypus, a peculiar ani¬ 
mal belonging to the sluggish streams of 
Australia, Papua, and Tasmania. It cer¬ 
tainly is one of the most peculiar, most ir¬ 
regular creatures in the animal kingdom. 
It combines in its make-up a number of 
features belonging to animals wholly un¬ 
related. It is about twenty inches in length, 
and has a body shaped not unlike that of a 
muskrat, covered with glossy black outer 
hair, with fine beaver-like fur beneath. 
The tail is broad and short, the upper sur¬ 
face is hairy. The eyes are small, and 
bright. The ears have no external opening, 
but the animal hears very well. The jaws 
are prolonged into a duck-like bill of 
horn, covered with black, smooth, sensitive, 
bare skin. The feet are webbed and fur¬ 
nished with digging claws. The mem¬ 
brane of the front foot is large. It ex¬ 
tends beyond the claws like a round disk 
but it can be folded back into the palm, 
so as to expose the claws for digging. The 
duckbill lives in colonies, in streams far 
enough from the sea to escape brackish 
water. It is a great swimmer and diver. 
Its food consists of snails, shell fish, and 
mud-loving insects, for which it puddles 
like a duck in muddy bottoms. The duck¬ 
bill digs a burrow into the river bank, with 
an entrance under the water, but terminat¬ 
ing in a dry, grassy nest, to which the fe¬ 
male retires in the breeding season. One 
of the most peculiar facts about this quad¬ 
ruped is that it gives birth, not to young, 
but lays several white eggs about three- 
quarters of an inch in length and one- 
half an inch in diameter, covered with a 
soft papery shell, like the eggs of a turtle. 
The mother keeps these eggs warm with 
her body for a time until the young are 
hatched, when she suckles them like any 
other mammal. Duckbills are shy and 
difficult to observe. On the approach of 
a person they dive to the bottom of the wa¬ 
ter, or retire to their burrows and reap¬ 
pear only when they believe the coast to 
be clear. The adult makes a noise not 
unlike the growling of a puppy, but it 
is jnoffensive and peaceable. The duck¬ 
bill is also called the duck mole. See 
Echidna ; Australia. 

Duckhawk. See Falcon. 


Ducking Stool, a contrivance for dip¬ 
ping common scolds under water. A chair 
was fastened securely to one end of a long 
sweep or pole mounted on a post by the 
shore of a pond or other body of water. 
The scold was tied into the chair amidst 
the plaudits of the rabble. An officer at 
the other end of the sweep whirled it 
around until the seat hung over the water, 
then worked his end up and down, churn¬ 
ing the unfortunate culprit into and out of 
the water, amid a volley of oaths and vitu¬ 
peration, until the habit of scolding was 
overcome for the time at least. This rel¬ 
ic of a coarse age was used generally in 
England at the time of the colonization 
of America, and it was introduced in the 
American colonies, both north and south. 
Its employment was not given over en¬ 
tirely until as late as 1806. See Pillory. 

Ductility, the quality which permits a 
substance to be drawn into a fine wire or 
thread. Heat increases ductility. Glass 
at a white heat may be drawn into oval¬ 
shaped threads like silk. Of the metals 
platinum is the most ductile. Then follow 
gold, silver, iron, copper, zinc, tin, lead, 
and nickel. Gold has been drawn into 
wires with a diameter of 4,000 to the inch. 
It is asserted that platinum wires, 30,000 
to the inch, have been drawn. This is as 
fine as the thread of a spider. Silk, as it 
leaves the cocoon, runs about 5,000 to the 
inch. In comparison human hair is coarse. 
The finest hair is the six-hundredth part 
of an inch in diameter. Fibers of wool 
run from 600 to 1,500 to the inch. See 
Wire; Nails. 

Duel, a combat by arrangement between 
two persons. A challenge and its accept¬ 
ance are an essential part of a duel. The 
Pilgrims had scarce landed at Plymouth 
when a duel was fought by two working¬ 
men. Duels were numerous throughout 
the thirteen colonies, yet persisted longer 
in the South. In 1804 Alexander Hamil¬ 
ton was killed in a duel by Vice-President 
Aaron Burr. General Jackson killed M. 
Dickinson in a duel, yet President Jack- 
son dismissed four officers from the navy 
for engaging in the practice. Colonel Ben¬ 
ton, the famous Missouri statesman, killed 
his man. The various states of the Union 


DUESSA—DUKHOBORS 


have passed laws forbidding the practice. 
Dueling is said to have originated in west¬ 
ern Europe among the peoples of Teutonic 
descent. In the two centuries following the 
discovery of America it is estimated that 
from 2,000 to 6,000 Frenchmen alone fell 
yearly in duels. In case an opponent be¬ 
came obnoxious it was quite possible to 
hire an expert swordsman, whose trade it 
was to pick a quarrel, issue a challenge 
and run his sword through the body of 
the objectionable person. Dueling is now 
rare in France and still rarer in England, 
but the practice lingers in the German 
army, and, in the modified form of fenc¬ 
ing matches, among the students of the 
fighting corps of the German universities. 
See Hamilton ; Clay. 

Duessa, du-es'sa, in Spenser’s Faerie 
Queene , a loathsome old witch. The name 
Duessa means “double-mind,” or “false- 
faith”; and Duessa is represented as the 
daughter of Falsehood and Shame. She 
assumes the name of Fidessa and the ap¬ 
pearance of a young and beautiful woman 
in distress. In this disguise she entices the 
Red-Cross Knight into the Palace of Pride, 
and leads him to drink of an enchanted 
fountain, which so paralyzes him that he 
is overcome by a giant. Una sends Prince 
Arthur to the rescue. He slays the giant, 
saves the knight, strips Duessa of her 
disguise, and drives her into the wilder¬ 
ness. Duessa appears under various dis¬ 
guises in several cantos of the poem. It 
is supposed that Spenser intended Duessa 
to typify the anti-Elizabethan party in re¬ 
ligion and politics. In the fifth book she is 
said to represent Mary, Queen of Scots, 
taken as a type of the enmity of the Romish 
Church toward Queen Elizabeth. What¬ 
ever political and religious significance 
The Faerie Qaeene may have had in Spen¬ 
ser’s time, is long since forgotten, but its 
romantic beauty and poetic imagery will 
endure for all time. See Spenser; Faerie 
Queene. 

Dugong, a marine animal belonging 
to the sea cows. It is several feet in 
length. It is related closely to the mana¬ 
tee of the Florida coast. It lives on sea¬ 
weed in the border waters of Australia, 
the Indian Ocean, and the Red Sea. The 


dugong has a ruddy head, almost human 
in outline. The female swims with one 
flipper, clasping the young to the breast 
with the other. When she dives she 
shows a fish-like tail. It is supposed that 
the mermaid myth first told by Arab sea¬ 
men arose from seeing this creature. The 
dugong is almost extinct. See Manatee ; 
Mermaid. 

Duke, a title of nobility ranking below 
that of Prince. The term is akin to the 
Venetian doge and the French due. All 
three are derived from the Latin dux, a 
military leader. The younger sons of the 
sovereign of the United Kingdom are 
dukes. About thirty English dukes sit 
in the House of Lords by right of birth. 
The Irish and Scotch dukes select a part 
of their number. The first English duke 
was Edward, the Black Prince, who was 
made Duke of Cornwall in 1337. Dukes 
are created by the sovereign. On state 
occasions a duke is permitted to wear a 
coronet, consisting of a band of fine gold 
surmounted by eight strawberry leaves of 
the same metal. The top may or may not 
be closed by a velvet cap. In Austria the 
dukes of the royal family are called arch¬ 
dukes. In Russia, they are called grand- 
dukes. In Germany the title is held only 
by five persons. Each is the ruler of an 
independent principality. See Prece¬ 
dence. 

Dukhobors, a religious communistic 
sect of western Manitoba. They are im¬ 
migrants from Russia, where they broke 
away from the Orthodox Church. They 
accept the Ten Commandments and the 
“useful parts” of the gospels. They re¬ 
ject the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and 
the divinity of Christ. The only rule is 
right living. They submit with reluc¬ 
tance to any form of government, and were 
induced with difficulty to go through the 
necessary form of securing title to the 
lands they occupy. In Russia they were 
persecuted, killed, imprisoned, banished, 
flogged, and fined. Leo Tolstoi and others 
interfered, and they were permitted to emi¬ 
grate. By 1900, 7,000 of the sect had set¬ 
tled in Manitoba. In 1902 a fanatical 
procession set out barefooted in winter 
seeking “the Christ.” They declared they 


DULUTH—DUMA 


could not make private property of “God’s 
cattle,” or use animals as beasts of bur¬ 
den. The Canadian authorities had diffi¬ 
culty in returning the pilgrims to their 
homes, since which they have settled down 
quietly. They are industrious, hospitable 
but exclusive, kindly to each other, skilled 
in agriculture and in road making. They 
hold property in common. Men and wom¬ 
en work in shifts from 5 a. m. to 8 p. m. 

It would be hard to find a community con¬ 
sisting of an equal number of men among whom 
there is less crime, and more industry, honesty, 
and hospitality, or more personal attention by 
the hale adults to the needs of the old people 
and the children. They are sober, temperate, 
healthy; they are a worthy and estimable folk 
in spite of their obstinacy, sectarian exclusive¬ 
ness, and their too great dependence on a very 
fallible authority—Aylmer Maude. 

Duluth, a city of Minnesota. It is 
situated at the western extremity of Lake 
Superior at the mouth of the St. Louis 
River. The name is derived from that of 
Daniel Greysolon Du Lhut (1645-1709), 
a French pioneer-trader who is supposed 
to have camped here at an early date. 
Duluth is called the Zenith City. In size 
it is the third city of Minnesota. It oc¬ 
cupies sixty-nine square miles and has a 
water frontage of twenty-four. The site 
is long and narrow and rises rapidly from 
the water to bluffs from 400 to 800 feet 
high. A fine driveway along the bluffs 
commands a superb view of the city, the 
harbor, and the shipping. A narrow 
tongue of land several miles in length, cast 
up between the outflowing current of the 
river and the inbursting waves of Superi¬ 
or, is known as Minnesota Point. It af¬ 
fords natural harborage- of great extent. 
A government canal guarded by lighthous¬ 
es has been cut through the Point near 
the shore. An overhead ferry like that of 
Rouen, France, crosses the canal. The 
harbor is lined for miles with huge grain 
elevators, lumber piles and coal docks. 
West Superior, on the Wisconsin side of 
the St. Louis, seems a part of the same 
city. Palatial lake steamers, whalebacks 
laden with grain, boats piled high with 
lumber, and darting tugs, with the attend¬ 
ant whistling and turning of bridges, give 
the harbor a maritime air which a stran¬ 


ger is hardly prepared to expect in the in¬ 
terior of North America. 

Of public buildings the most noticeable 
is the Central High School. It is an im¬ 
posing four-story edifice of red stone. It 
occupies a commanding position. A Car¬ 
negie library, a state normal school, large 
hotels, and huge wholesale blocks may be 
mentioned. 

The manufactures of the city are chief¬ 
ly lumber and wooden products, and foun¬ 
dry and machine work. A project to 
lead the waters of the upper St. Louis to 
a point within the corporate limits prom¬ 
ises water power of importance. 

Duluth is already a port of enormous 
shipments. Thirty million tons of iron 
ore are shipped from the vicinity annually. 
The elevators handle 25,000,000 bushels 
of wheat and upward each year. In 1902 
280,000,000 feet of lumber went eastward 
over the lake. The coal docks have a ca¬ 
pacity of 1,000,000 tons. Duluth is the 
natural place to handle westward bound 
salt, sugar, coal, and all other bulky, heavy 
commodities. It is the terminus of the St. 
Lawrence and Great Lakes waterway. 
Denver and San Francisco are nearer Du¬ 
luth than they are to any other lake port. 
Duluth is the natural lake port for an enor¬ 
mous region now known as the Northwest. 
Eight railways, including two transcon¬ 
tinental lines, radiate from Duluth. Hard¬ 
ware and groceries are the specialties of 
the wholesale trade. 

The Indian title to th-e town site of Du¬ 
luth was extinguished in 1854. The city 
was incorporated in 1857. In 1870 the 
first railway, the St. Paul and Duluth, was 
built. The Northern Pacific followed 
soon after. The rapid growth of the pop¬ 
ulation is indicated by the United States 
Census returns,—in 1880, 3,470; in 1890, 
33,187 ; in 1900, 52,969; and in 1910, 
78,466. 

See Ferry; Minnesota; Superior. 

Duma, a representative body of Russia. 
It corresponds to the lower house of Par¬ 
liament and of the American Congress. 
Under a law promulgated by the czar 
August 6, 1905, the Duma consists of 
members representing the chief seven cities 
and the provinces. Deputies are elected 


DUMAS—DU MAURIER 


for five years by conventions of delegates 
chosen by the votes of each province or city 
concerned. The ballot is confined chiefly 
to property holders. Working people may 
be represented at the polls by two voters 
for each village or peasant community, and 
one voter for each 1,000 factory opera¬ 
tives. Students, soldiers, and policemen 
may not vote away from home. Members 
of the Duma receive ten roubles, about 
$7.70 per day of actual session, and round 
trip expenses of travel once a year. 

An upper house, known as the Council 
of the Empire, consists one-half of mem¬ 
bers appointed by the czar and one-half 
elected one by each provincial legislature, 
six by the synod of the Orthodox Church, 
six by the Academy of Sciences and the 
universities, twelve by city chambers of 
commerce, eighteen by the nobility, and 
six by the landed proprietors of Poland 
assembled in congress at Warsaw. The 
Council is summoned annually. Elective 
members must hold academical degrees. 

The two houses have equal rank. Each 
house passes on the credentials of its own 
members. Sittings are public. Neither 
body may receive petitions. The assent 
of both houses is requisite to the passage 
of a bill. Members of both houses are ex¬ 
empt from arrest. A bill rejected by the 
czar may not be presented to him during 
the course of the same session. A bill re¬ 
jected by either house may not be brought 
forward again without the consent of the 
czar. All revenue bills require the assent 
of both houses. 

The first Duma sat from April 27 to 
July 9, 1906, and was sent home in dis¬ 
pleasure. The second Duma sat from 
February 20, 1907, to June 3, 1907, and 
was dissolved. The third Duma began its 
session November 1, 1907. 

The constitution is not what western 
Europe would call progressive. The Coun¬ 
cil is the servant of the czar, and the Du¬ 
ma is not a powerful body; but even a 
feeble beginning is encouraging. The pop¬ 
ular assemblv, as in other countries, will 
find ways of making its authority felt and 
will in time, as in England, force the 
upper house and the ruler to do its will. 
See Russia. 


Dumas, dii-ma', Alexandre (1803- 

1870), a French dramatist and novelist. 
His grandmother on his father’s side was 
a negress. Dumas was very dark and curly 
haired. His life was spent largely in 
Paris. As a young man he was employed 
by the Duke of Orleans in the capacity of 
secretary. This position afforded an op¬ 
portunity for reading, study, and writing. 
He tried a number of farces. In 1829 he 
was lucky enough to hit on the plot of 
a play called Henri III, which brought 
him fame and several thousand dollars. 
From this time on he devoted himself to 
literature, producing plays and novels 
without end. The Recollections of a Phy¬ 
sician, the Count of Monte-Cristo, and 
the Three Musketeers —the latter spun out 
by sequels into eight volumes—are per¬ 
haps his most noted works. He was an 
unprincipled, unchaste, depraved man, 
with dissipated habits, but a man of genius 
and ambition. After he had achieved 
fame and his writings commanded a high 
price he employed a bureau of hack writers 
and guided their efforts, turning off the 
product of his factory as his own. When 
this fact was discovered he fell into disre¬ 
pute, but he had amassed a fortune. This 
he spent, in part, in the erection of a 
theater in which his plays should be acted, 
and in the building of a chateau or country 
seat which he named Monte-Cristo. 

A natural son of the same name, called 
by way of distinction, Dumas the Younger, 
followed in his father’s footsteps, and 
wrote a large number of dashing novels 
and dramas. The term demi-monde was 
coined by him as a title for one of his 
dramas. He was made a member of the 
French Academy. He died in 1895. The 
relation of the father to the son may be 
inferred from the following words of the 
younger Dumas. “My father is so vain 
that he is capable of standing in livery 
behind his own carriage to make people 
think he sports a negro footman.” 

Du Maurier, dii mo're-a, George 
Louis Palmella Busson (1834-1896), an 
English artist and writer of novels. Du 
Maurier was of a French family which 
had been driven to England by the Revo¬ 
lution. He was educated at Paris. He is 


J 


DUMBARTON—DUNBAR 


well known by his illustrations in Punch, 
Once a Week, Cornhill Magazine, and 
other periodicals. In 1891 he published 
Peter Ibbetson, a strange, dreamy story, 
involving an account of a supernatural 
power possessed by Ibbetson and his old 
sweetheart whereby they are able to meet 
in spirit. Trilby appeared in 1894 and be¬ 
came popular both as a story and in a 
dramatized form. Trilby is an artist’s 
model who is made to sing by hypnotic 
power. Du Maurier’s novels will be short¬ 
lived. His drawings for Punch, however, 
have permanent importance, since they are 
illustrative of the society of his time. 

Dumbarton, a castle-crowned rock ris¬ 
ing sheer from the north shore of the 
Clyde, eleven miles northwest of Glasgow. 
When Scotland and England united, this 
castle was one of four Scottish fortifica¬ 
tions which, by the act of union, must 
be maintained. It is a position of some 
strength. Before the day of gunpowder 
it was impregnable, and was considered the 
key to the Highlands. Queen Mary was 
detained here when a child. She was mak¬ 
ing her way to Dumbarton when the men 
of Glasgow sallied out and defeated her 
at the battle of Langside. The rock is 
one of the few spots where the genuine 
Scotch thistle grows wild. A huge two- 
handed sword said to have belonged to 
William Wallace is kept in the castle. The 
summit of the rock commands an ex¬ 
tensive view of the Firth of Clyde, the 
shipping, the green shores, the spires of 
Glasgow and the mountains of western 
Scotland. The rock itself is a striking ob¬ 
ject and cannot fail to attract the eye of 
the traveler. The town of Dumbarton, which 
contains the celebrated castle above referred 
to, is a well known seaport. The building 
of iron steamships is its most important in¬ 
dustry. Dumbarton is also the name of a 
county of Scotland bounded by Perthshire 
on the north, Stirling and Lanark on the 
east, the Clyde on the south, and Argyll 
and Loch Long on the west. Its area is 241 
square miles. Population, 98,014. See 
Clyde. , 

Dum-dum Bullet, a bullet with a soft 
spot at the point. A steel bullet, or a 
lead bullet with a hard tip of steel or 


copper, cuts its way through a bone, leav¬ 
ing a hole as neat as though it were made 
by an auger. Such a wound renders a 
soldier unfit for duty, but, with ordinary 
care, is not dangerous. A bullet with an 
extra soft point, on the contrary, flattens 
slightly on striking and shatters a bone 
or splits it into fragments. Such a wound, 
unless followed promptly by amputation, is 
likely to prove fatal. The dum-dum bul¬ 
let is so named from the fact that it was 
first made at the British arsenal of Dum¬ 
dum, near Calcutta, India. The use of 
these bullets in war was forbidden by the 
Hague Peace Conference of 1901-2. 

Dumfries, dum-fres', a Scottish town 
on the River Nith, about six miles from 
the Firth of Solway. It boasts the oldest 
bridge in Scotland. In the church of a 
monastery here Robert Bruce slew the Red 
Comyn. Though a stirring town in an¬ 
cient border days, it is now a trading city 
of 20,000 people. It is full of monuments 
of the past and is proud of possessing the 
last resting place of Robert Burns. This 
is a six-sided Greek edifice sheltering a 
marble group which represents the muse 
of Scotland robing the plowman poet with 
the mantle of inspiration as he stands by 
his plow. See Ayr; Burns. 

We linger by the Doon’s low trees 
And pastoral Nith, and Wooded Ayr, 

And round thy sepulchres, Dumfries, 

The poet’s tomb is there. 

Dunbar, Paul Laurence (1872-1906), 
an American poet. He was born in Day- 
ton, Ohio, June 17, 1872. He died there 
February 10, 1906. His parents were 
negro slaves. The father escaped into 
Canada prior to the Civil War. The 
mother was freed by the war and re¬ 
joined her husband at Dayton. The father 
was a plasterer and white-washer; the 
mother did laundry work. Both parents 
learned to read. The father preferred his¬ 
tory ; the mother poetry. Paul grew up in 
poverty. He was by turns a newsboy and 
an elevator boy. He was educated in the 
public schools. He first attracted notice 
by writing a poem for his high school 
class. In 1903 he published a little vol¬ 
ume of verses called Oak and Ivy Poems. 
It was pronounced creditable for a young 


DUNCIAD—DUNKARDS 


man of any color. Though entirely capa¬ 
ble of writing in standard English, young 
Dunbar felt that he ought to write in the 
negro dialect. It was his ambition to be 
regarded as the poet of the negro race. 
His best known poem is entitled When 
Malinda Sings. His mother’s name was 
Malinda. His last 'poem, written for a 
Christmas book, was entitled, Howdy, 
Honey, Howdy. In 1898 he published a 
volume, Lyrics of Lowly Life, to which 
William Dean Howells wrote an intro¬ 
duction. “We call his verse dialect,” said 
Howells, “but only so could he express 
the mental, moral, and social range of the 
Americanized black. He is humorous, ten¬ 
der, sympathetic. He realizes the limita¬ 
tions of his people and is not ashamed of 
them. He divines and reports the lowly 
hearts and minds.” We add two charac¬ 
teristic stanzas of Dunbar’s poetry. The 
first is a poem entitled Possum; the second 
is from his Whittier, lines written soon 
after the death of that poet. See Negro. 

Ef dey’s anyt’ing dat riles me 
An jes gits me out o’ hitch, 

Twell I want to tek my coat off, 

So’s to r’ar an’ t’ar an’ pitch. 

Hit’s to see some ign’nt white man 
’Mittin’ dat owdacious sin— 

W’en he want to cook a possum 
Tekin’ off de possum’s skin. 

Great poets never die, for earth 

Doth count their lives of too great worth 

To lose them from her treasured store; 

So shalt thou live for evermore— 

Though far thy form from mortal ken— 

Deep in the hearts and minds of men. 

Dunciad. See Pope, Alexander. 

Dune, a low hill formed by drifting 
sand. A dune is not a dust formation. 
Where dry sand is exposed the wind cuts 
it away and whirls the grains or slides 
them along the surface until they settle by 
their own weight into a place of shelter. 
This drifting takes place usually on a 
coast where a wind from the water has an 
unobstructed sweep. A very ordinary wind 
carries dry sand up a long slope, piling it 
just over the ridge. As the operation 
continues the far edge of a dune grows 
higher and higher, and travels or wanders 
farther from the shore. The traveler by 
rail around the southern end of Lake 


Michigan passes the faces of dunes ad¬ 
vancing southward. They tower up to 
the height of two or three tall trees. 
Dunes are not infrequent in sandy prairie 
countries, as in the extreme western parts 
of Nebraska and Kansas. Cape Cod, 
southeastern France, the shores extending 
along the Bay of Biscay to the Spanish 
border, the Netherlands, Denmark along 
the North Sea, and Northeastern Prussia 
along the Baltic, have serious problems 
to meet. Forests, fertile farms, villages, 
and mills are buried; harbors are filled; 
and the courses of rivers choked up. A 
dune near Haarlem in the Netherlands 
rises 197 feet above the sea level. Many 
of the old caravan cities of Asia have been 
buried completely, not by sandstorms, but 
by the insidious approach of sandwalls 
that came nearer and nearer, a few yards 
each year, until walls, temples, houses, 
and palaces were overwhelmed beneath a 
vast pile of sand. The wind also cuts 
great hills away. The transporting power 
of the wind varies as the sixth power of 
its velocity. A current of four miles an 
hour has sixty-four times the carrying 
power of a two-mile wind. The govern¬ 
ments of the regions mentioned have made 
strenuous efforts to control the sands. 
Some account of the success of Massachu¬ 
setts in binding sand areas by transplanting 
grass, may be found in an article on Beach 
Grass. 

Another method of protection is the 
formation of an artificial dune near the 
coast. The French build a fence of brush or 
boards. As soon as that is covered, they 
build another on top of it, until a ridge 
is formed so high and so steep on the sea¬ 
ward side that sand ceases to ascend it. 
A height of thirty-three feet is said to 
be sufficient near the coast. Another 
method of arresting sand, or rather of keep¬ 
ing it in place, is that of covering it with 
a layer of fine beach or heather until a 
sward of grass or a growth of trees can 
be established. 

See Denmark; Dust; Sand. 

Dunkards, a religious sect originating 
in Westphalia in 1708. They were driven 
out by persecution and migrated to Penn¬ 
sylvania. From this state as a center, they 


DUNNE—DURER 




have colonized in various states of the 
Union. They refuse to take an oath in 
court or to render military service. Among 
the practices of the sect are baptism by 
immersion, the washing of feet, the cele¬ 
bration of the. Lord’s Supper, refraining 
from lawsuits, a simple style of dress and 
plain living. They anoint the sick with 
sacred oil and refuse to give medicines. 
They now have over a thousand congrega¬ 
tions, chiefly within the triangle limited 
by Pennsylvania, Virginia and Indiana. 
They are not communists. 

Dunne, Finley Peter (1867-), an 
American journalist, known to the general 
public by the name of “Mr. Dooley,” un¬ 
der which pseudonym Mr. Dunne’s popular 
writings were published. Mr. Dunne was 
born in Chicago. After attending the pub¬ 
lic schools of that city he began his jour¬ 
nalistic career as a reporter. In 1891 he 
became citv editor of the Times; later a 
member of the editorial staff of the Even¬ 
ing Post, and of the Times-Herald; and in 
1897 editor-in-chief of the Evening Jour¬ 
nal. The “Dooley” sketches appeared in 
the Times-H erald, in which, over the name 
of “Martin Dooley, Publican of Archey 
Road,” Mr. Dunne commented philosophi¬ 
cally and humorously upon a variety of sub¬ 
jects. Collected in book form these writ¬ 
ings include, Mr. Dooley in Peace and War, 
Mr. Dooley in the Plearts of His Country¬ 
men, Mr. Dooley’s Philosophy, and Mr. 
Dooley’s Opinions. 

Dunstan, Saint (925-988), Archbishop 
of Canterbury. He was born and educated 
at Glastonbury. Pie became a monk of the 
Benedictine order, devoting his time to 
study and music, winning renown for his 
pious and ascetic life. In 945 under King 
Edmund he was made an abbot, his abbey 
growing rapidly into a famous school. 
Winning the favor of Edred, Edmund’s 
successor, Dunstan was made prime minis¬ 
ter, and took a prominent part in the di¬ 
rection of both civil and ecclesiastical 
affairs. In Edwy’s reign he was banished, 
but under Edgar who came to the throne 
in 959, he was recalled and made Arch¬ 
bishop of Canterbury. The credit for Ed¬ 
gar’s peaceful reign is due largely to the 
wise counsels of Dunstan. Ethelred de¬ 


prived him of power again, and Dunstan’s 
last years were spent in literary pursuits 
and in the work of his diocese. 

Diirer, Albrecht (1471-1528), a cele¬ 
brated German painter of Nuremberg. His 
father was a skillful goldsmith. Diirer 
learned his father’s trade. Pie studied, 
traveled, and settled down in his native city 
as a painter and engraver. To please his 
father he married the daughter of Hans 
Frey, a celebrated mechanic. Cynical 
writers of the day state that he was well 
educated, well traveled, and that he mar¬ 
ried a shrewish wife, receiving with her 
200 florins and 2,000 unhappy days. The 
Nativity and the Descent From the Cross 
are among his noted pictures. Two life 
size pictures, the first of Peter and John, 
the second of Paul and Mark, are known 
together as the Four Temperaments. Each 
of the four apostles is a study in tem¬ 
perament. Peter, who drew a hasty sword 
in the garden, yet denied his Master thrice, 
is the man of impulse; John, whom the 
Master loved, is the man of gentle melan¬ 
choly; Paul, who persecuted the saints, 
and Mark, the recorder of anecdote and 
parable, are wonderful studies in face and 
attitude. Each of the four seems a very 
embodiment of the character given him 
in the New Testament. 

In the Museum of Madrid may be seen 
Diirer’s The Crucifixion, a portrait of 
himself, and two Allegories , which, as 
Death is the chief figure, are doubtless re¬ 
lated to the famous Dance of Death, a 
popular subject at that time. It was 
Diirer’s custom to sign his pictures with 
a monogram, a small D within a large A. 
It is so simple as to be readily copied. 
Two pictures are exceptions— Ten Thou¬ 
sand Martyrs and Adoration of the Trini¬ 
ty —now preserved at Vienna. In these 
the artist’s own portrait is to be seen. In 
the former he is represented standing with 
his friend, Willibald Pirkheimer. In 
Diirer’s hand is a small flag bearing an in¬ 
scription in Latin to the effect that Al¬ 
brecht Diirer painted the picture in 1508. 
This is thought to indicate that Diirer 
considered these two pictures his master¬ 
pieces. Most people are inclined to agree 
with this opinion. 



DURHAM—DUST 


Diirer may be studied to best advan¬ 
tage in the picture galleries of Munich, 
Vienna, and Dresden. There are a few 
pictures in the German Museum in Nu¬ 
remberg. Diirer divides honors with Hans 
Holbein as the master painter of Germany. 
The house in which he lived at Nurem¬ 
berg is kept with care. The citizens of 
Nuremberg regard his reputation as re¬ 
flecting great credit on the old city. Diirer 
was also a skillful engraver, and was the 
author of a treatise on Human Propor¬ 
tion. It has been translated into several 
languages. See Nuremberg; Holbein. 

Painting was the least of his accomplish¬ 
ments.—Melanchthon. 

Durbar, originally an audience-room of 
an oriental monarch. Later the word came 
to mean the audience itself and is used to 
designate the assembly at which the suc¬ 
cessive English rulers are proclaimed Em¬ 
peror and Empress of India. At the first 
Durbar, in 1877, Queen Victoria, repre¬ 
sented by Lord Lytton, was proclaimed 
Empress of India. At the second Durbar, 
in January, 1903, King Edward ATI and 
Queen Alexandra were proclaimed Emperor 
and Empress, being represented by the 
Viceroy and by the Duke and Duchess of 
Connaught. At the third Durbar, in De¬ 
cember, 1911, when King George V and 
Queen Mary were proclaimed Emperor 
and Empress, the magnificence of the cere¬ 
mony and the number present were greater 
than ever before, and for the first time the 
sovereigns were present in person. 

Durum Wheat, a variety of common 
wheat. Durum means hard, having ref¬ 
ence to the hardness of the kernel. The 
United States Department of Agriculture 
began experiments with durum wheat in 
1896. A number of state experimental sta¬ 
tions took it up. Durum wheat has two qual¬ 
ities that commend it to the farmer. It re¬ 
sists rust, and it may be grown in regions 
of light rainfall. It is a favorite with raisers 
who practice dry farming. In the south¬ 
ern part of Kansas it is sown as winter 
wheat. Farther northward it is raised en¬ 
tirely as a spring wheat. The head is 
large and bearded, having somewhat the 
appearance of barley. The kernel is large, 
and is pointed at each end. It has a 


clear, transparent appearance, owing to 
the fact that the durum kernel contains 
less starch than other varieties. Flour 
made from durum wheat is used largely 
in the manufacture of macaroni and spa¬ 
ghetti. For this reason it is called not 
infrequently macaroni wheat. Durum 
wheat is used also to mix with the softer 
wheats in the making of flour. In 1906 
the United States produced about 50,000 
bushels of this variety of wheat. It bids 
fair to become the popular wheat of the 
Great Plains region. 

Diisseldorf, a German city. It is situ¬ 
ated on the Rhine, twenty-two miles below, 
that is to say north of, Cologne. The 
modern city is a thriving port and a rail¬ 
way center. The population in 1910 was 
253,274. Diisseldorf was for a century or 
two the residence of the Princes Palatine 
and was a center of art. The most valu¬ 
able part of the art gallery at Munich 
was formerly in the academy of art at . 
Diisseldorf, and was removed by the elect¬ 
or when he changed his place of resi¬ 
dence. In the first part of the nineteenth 
century the most celebrated school of 
painting in Europe was here. 

Dust, fine earth capable of being car¬ 
ried in the wind. The smaller a particle, 
the more surface it presents to the wind 
in proportion to its weight. Doubling 
the diameter of a grain of dust multiplies 
its weight by the cube of two, or eight, 
and its surface by the square of two, or 
four. Trebling the diameter multiplies 
the weight by the cube of three, or twenty- 
seven, and the surface by the square of 
three, or nine, etc. The most prevalent 
dust is fine sand. Dust is carried several 
miles high into the air. In fact the at¬ 
mosphere is never entirely free from dust, 
though heavy rains tend to bring it down. 
Grassy prairies and forests are almost free 
from serious dust; but in dry weather 
sandy tracts and large areas, in which 
fall plowing is the rule, are afflicted by 
dust storms disagreeable to the farmer and 
housekeeper alike. In the Sahara and 
other desert regions sand storms arise. 
Bird and beast seek shelter; the caravan 
halts; the Arab enfolds his face and per¬ 
son in a shawl; the faithful camel kneels 


DUTCH—DUTCH EAST INDIES 


down flat and stretches its long neck for¬ 
ward on the sand, closes its long, silky 
eyelashes, and narrows the slit of its nose. 
Even the tireless vulture lights and dis¬ 
poses its head and plumage till the suf¬ 
focating cloud is by. 

Though apt to be regarded as a nui¬ 
sance, dust is, after all, an advantage to 
the world. Water does not soak through 
genuine dust, because the particles do not 
lie closely enough together to permit the 
action of so-called capillarity. Compact 
soil, whether clay, sand, or mold, will draw 
water or absorb it while dust remains dry. 
A dusty surface is a preventive against 
the loss of water by evaporation, and 
saves large areas from becoming deserts. 
In semi-arid or dry regions, where rain 
is not to be expected during the summer, 
farmers pulverize the surface of the soil 
with fine-toothed harrows and form a dust 
blanket as early in the spring as possible, 
to prevent the escape of moisture by evap¬ 
oration. The splid earth beneath holds 
the moisture of winter and spring until 
it is drawn upon as needed by the deep 
roots of the growing crop. Luxuriant 
crops protected by dust blankets may be 
seen growing side by side with barren, 
burnt up fields of equal fertility in which 
no pains were taken to prevent evapora¬ 
tion. Ruskin has chosen Ethics of the 
Dust as the title of one of his most in¬ 
structive writings. 

See Desert; Sahara; Sand; Meteor; 
Volcano. 

Tt might be supposed there would be. some 
place—for instance, amid the fresh white snows 
of St. Bernard Pass in Switzerland—where there 
would be absolutely no dust. But the men of 
science tell us otherwise. In fact the celebrated 
M. Jung collected snow at this very spot, 8,100 
feet above the level of the sea; and when he had 
evaporated some fifteen liters of water produced 
by melting the snow, he found a very consider¬ 
able quantity of dust; and this dust proved to 
be minute particles of iron! 

Another scientist, M. Nordenskjold, in search 
of some place where dust would not be found 
contaminating the air, examined the greatest 
fall of snow in the memory of man (1871) at 
Stockholm, and likewise found a dust which 
proved to be metallic iron. Fearing that this 
might have come from neighboring roofs or 
chimneys, he had his brother examine the snow 
in a desolate plain surrounded by the forests 


of Finland. The black powder proved to be 
there also, and to be the same. 

The fact is, the earth’s atmosphere everywhere 
teems with dust. In the cities there is more 
than in the country; but not so much more as 
might be supposed. It has been estimated that 
the weight of dust suspended in the air above 
an ordinary city block is in the neighborhood 
of 33 pounds. At this rate the dust overhanging 
such cities as New York, Pittsburg, or Chicago 
would weigh several tons. 

Ordinary city dust is made up of ab«ut three 
quarters cinders. The other quarter is organic 
matter. This means vegetable and animal, living 
and dead. For—unpleasant as is the thought—• 
the dust contains its share of germs. Rains 
and snows reduce the quantity of dust in the 
air. In Paris it was found that an eight days’ 
dry spell increased the quantity of dust in the 
air to three or four times the normal amount, 
which is from 6 to 8 milligrams to a cubic 
meter of air. Supposedly pure rain water will 
pick up dust from the air, so that a liter will 
yield all the way from 23 to 421 milligrams of 
dust. 

Dust will travel marvelous distances in the 
air. On the 7th of February, 1863, there was 
a rain of sand in the Canary Islands, this sand 
coming from the Sahara desert 200 miles away. 
A more striking case was presented more re¬ 
cently when cinders from the great Chicago fire 
of 1871 arrived at the Azores forty days after 
that catastrophe. In the last century Europe 
experienced what was known as the celebrated 
“dry fog,” which lasted for three months, and 
was found to have been caused by a volcanic 
eruption in Iceland.—Gibson Gardiner in The 
Technical World. 

Dutch, the people and the tongue of 
Holland, now the Netherlands. 

Dutch East Indies, a collective term 
for the Asiatic possessions of the Nether¬ 
lands. The possessions include twelve is¬ 
land colonies or groups of islands com¬ 
prised between 6° N. and 11° S. latitude 
and 95° and 141° E. longitude. These 
possessions were in the hands of the Dutch 
East India Company, 1602-1798. The 
government of the Netherlands is repre¬ 
sented by a governor-general, a number of 
“residents,” and a proper force of in¬ 
spectors who control the natives through 
a vast host of petty native officials. Java 
is the chief of the East Indies. Sumatra 
and parts of Borneo, the Celebes, and 
the Moluccas and part of New Guinea 
are included under the term. 

Statistics. The following statistics 
are the latest to be had from trustworthy 
sources: 


DUTCH LITERATURE—DWARF 


Land area, square miles. 736,000 

Population.! .. 38,000,000 

Europeans . 81,000 

Chinese . 563,000 

Batavia . 138,551 

Samarang . 96,600 

Soerabaya . 150,198 

Island groups . 12 

Members of council . 5 

Annual expenditures . $75,000,000 

No. of soldiers . 33,000 

Acres under plow . 11,000,000 

Agricultural Productions— 

Cacao, pounds . 3,960,000 

Indigo, pounds . 635,000 

Tea, pounds . 26,000,000 

Colfee, pounds (1908). 61,865,063 

Cinchona, pounds . 3,400,000 

Tobacco, pounds . 113,000,000 

Sugar, pounds .1,892,000,000 

Exports .$132,000,000 

Domestic Animals— 

Horses . 482,000 

Buffaloes . 2,187,000 

Cattle . 3,103,000 

Petroleum, gallons . 220,000,000 

Miles of railway . 1,511 

Coal mined, tons . 366,000 

Tin, tons . 20,072 

Savings banks deposits . $5,200,000 

Teachers in European schools. 900 

Pupils enrolled . 24,000 

Schools for natives. 2,000 

Pupils enrolled . 25,000 

No. postoffices . 275 


See Java; Borneo. 

Dutch Literature. See Literature, 
Dutch. 

Dutchman’s Breeches, the common 
name of a wild herb belonging to the 
poppy family. It is related to the familiar 
bleeding heart of gardens, and to the wild 
squirrel corn. It grows in rich woods from 
Nova Scotia to North Dakota, and south¬ 
ward to the latitude of North Carolina. 
The stem and flower scape rise from a 
cluster of grain-like tubers crowded to¬ 
gether in a scaly bulb. They are gorged 
with sap. The white, nodding flowers ap¬ 
pear early in spring. The corolla is heart- 
shaped, having two baggy spurs, suggest¬ 
ing the common name, though Turk’s 
Trousers would have been quite as appro¬ 
priate. 

Dutch Reformed Church, the nation¬ 
al church of Holland. It traces its or¬ 
ganization to the reformer, Zwingli, of 
Switzerland. Its doctrines are those of 
Calvin and Presbyterianism. The darkest 


days of the church were met during the 
repressive rule of Charles V. The house 
of Orange, from which William III of 
England sprang, is identified with the 
struggle of the church for liberty. The 
Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam organ¬ 
ized congregations in the New World. As 
a branch of Presbyterianism the denom¬ 
ination is strong in the Middle States. 
Theodore Roosevelt is a member. The 
denomination has about 700 American con¬ 
gregations. Rutgers College is its chief 
educational institution. 

Duties. See Tariff. 

Duval, dii-val', Claude, a noted Eng¬ 
lish highwayman. He w T as born in Nor¬ 
mandy in 1643 and was hanged at Tyburn, 
London, in 1670. Whether his exploits 
have been told aright or no, he has an un¬ 
equaled record for relieving gentlemen of 
their purses. He was held to be a hero by 
the common people, and if tradition is to 
be credited, he was a favorite with the 
ladies of a wide circle. His alleged ex¬ 
ploits have inspired many a bit of narrative 
to be found in the yellow literature of the 
past. 

Dvorak, dvor'zhak, Anton (1841- 
1904), a Bohemian musician, born at Miihl- 
hausen. His father was a butcher and the 
boy Anton was intended to follow in his 
footsteps. His musical talent, however, was 
so marked that he was allowed to study 
music. He played the violin in a theatre at 
Prague, and the organ in several churches. 
The Stabat Mater, a great religious work, 
first brought him fame as a composer. 
None of his subsequent compositions have 
exceeded it in popularity. His other works 
embrace operas, dances, symphonies, songs 
and cantatas. Dvorak’s music is strongly 
individual and reflects the personality of 
the Bohemian people. See Stabat Mater. 

Dwarf, a person much under the ordina¬ 
ry size. Dwarf means small; it does not 
mean misshapen. Dwarfs were known 
among the ancients. Aristotle and other 
writers held that a race of pygmies lived 
somewhere in Africa. This statement was 
verified by Paul Du Chaillu and Henry 
M. Stanley, who found a dwarf people in 
the interior of the Dark Continent. As 
compared with giants, who are seldom en- 



































DWIGHT—DYEING 


tirely healthy or long lived, dwarfs are 
usually well built and active. Some of 
them have been decidedly intellectual, and 
have lived to a good old age. Their chil¬ 
dren are not infrequently of ordinary size. 

A number of dwarfs have been celebra¬ 
ted. Philetus of Cos, the tutor of Ptolemy, 
was so small that his facetious friends 
said he was obliged to carry stones in his 
pockets to prevent himself from being 
blown away. Julia, the niece of the Ro¬ 
man Augustus, had a little handmaid 
named Andromeda, whose height was but 
twentv-eight inches. A French dwarf 
named Bebe lived in the Orleans family. 
He was but twenty-three inches in height. 
During the French Revolution he was 
made the carrier of dispatches. He was 
dressed in the clothing of an infant and 
carried in the arms of a nurse, thus es¬ 
caping the search to which ordinary trav¬ 
elers were subjected. He died in Paris 
in 1858 at the age of ninety. 

Among the legends connected with the 
court of King Arthur is one of a dwarf 
by the name of Tom Thumb. “In Ar¬ 
thur’s court Tom Thumb did live,” is the 
first line of an old English ballad. One 
of the most celebrated English dwarfs 
was Jeffery Hudson, whom Sir Walter 
Scott introduces, in his Peveril of the 
Peak. The Duke of Buckinghamshire, 
having invited Charles I and his queen, 
Henrietta Maria, to a feast, caused the 
crust of a huge meat pie to be cut, when out 
stepped Jeffery to the astonishment and 
amusement of those at table. The Duke 
presented Jeffery to the queen, in whose 
service he remained for many years. At 
the age of thirty, he was but eighteen 
inches in height. He then took a second 
growth, attaining a stature of three feet, 
nine inches. He appears to have been a 
peppery little chap, the butt of many teas¬ 
ing jokes. On one occasion, he challenged 
a Mr. Crofts to a duel. The latter, to 
carry on the jest, appeared armed only 
with a squirt gun; but the dwarf shot the 
unfortunate courtier dead. He was in¬ 
trusted with several delicate missions to 
France. In Sir Jeffery’s day the dwarf 
appears to have occupied a privileged place 
in European courts, not unlike that for¬ 


merly held by the court fool. As late as 
the reign of Charles II, a court party is 
described as catching up a dwarf and 
tossing him from person to person, merely 
to enjoy his discomfiture. 

The most celebrated American dwarf 
was Charles Stratton of Bridgeport, Con¬ 
necticut. At the age of twenty-five he 
was but thirty-one inches in height. He 
married Miss Lavinia Warren, a woman 
of his own size. The pair were exhibited 
by P. T. Barnum, the American showman, 
both in this country and abroad. Queen 
Victoria is said to have taken a great 
interest in the little Charles, or General 
Tom Thumb, as he was popularly called. 
Scientists, who have sought for the physi¬ 
ological difference between dwarfs and 
other people, claim that the cells which 
compose the dwarf’s body are of the usu¬ 
al size, but that for some reason there 
are not so many of them. In fact the 
fewer cells of a small body are apt to be 
of superior quality. 

See Pygmy; Giant. 

Dwight, dwlt, Timothy (1752-1817), 

an American clergyman. He was born at 
Norwich, Connecticut. His father was a 
merchant. His mother was a daughter of 
the famous Jonathan Edwards. It is said 
that he was able to read the Bible fluently 
at the age of four. He was graduated at 
Yale at the age of seventeen. He taught in 
a grammar school, tutored in Yale, and 
served as a chaplain in the Revolutionary 
army. After the close of the war he open¬ 
ed an academy. In 1795 he was selected 
president of Yale College, a position which 
he held until his death. He is considered 
one of the ablest of a long line of Yale 
presidents. His published writings, which 
reach seven volumes, consist chiefly of theo¬ 
logical essays and sermons. A grandson of 
the same name, a noted Greek and Biblical 
scholar, became president of Yale in 1886. 

Dyeing, the process and art of impart¬ 
ing permanent color to yarn and cloth. Any 
animal, vegetable, or mineral substance, 
sufficiently porous to absorb coloring mat¬ 
ter in solution, may be dyed; but, as com¬ 
monly used the word has reference to fab¬ 
rics, or to the animal and vegetable fibers 
of which fabrics are composed. The art 


DYEING 


of dyeing is as old as civilization. Tyrian 
purple is supposed to have been used in 
Tyre 1,500 years before the Christian era. 
The ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Ro¬ 
mans employed dyes of various colors. 
During the Dark Ages the knowledge of 
this art seems to have died out in Europe. 
It is probable that the Jews preserved the 
secrets of the art. We learn from one ac¬ 
count that, about the year 1160, of the 200 
Jews then resident in Jerusalem, all were 
employed in wool dyeing, the trade being 
wholly in their hands. By the close of the 
thirteenth century the practice of the art 
of dyeing had spread again throughout 
Europe. Dyers’ gilds existed in many cit¬ 
ies, and knowledge advanced rapidly, 
until most of the natural dyes of the old 
world were well understood. The dis¬ 
covery of America resulted in the addition 
of two important dyestuffs—cochineal and 
logwood. Little improvement in methods 
was made until, with the development of 
chemistry in the nineteenth century, dye¬ 
ing became an applied science. 

If the various solutions used in dyeing 
possessed an affinity for the raw fiber, the 
process of coloring would be simple. 
Nothing but immersion in the dye bath 
would be required. As a matter of fact, 
this affinity is lacking, especially in cotton 
fiber. If a cotton fabric be put in the dye, 
the coloring matter is absorbed by the fiber 
to some extent; but if the cloth thus treat¬ 
ed be washed, the dyestuff in most cases 
is dissolved again, and the fiber left in 
its natural color. This fact makes dyeing 
a difficult matter. The dyer must find some 
third substance which has a mutual attrac¬ 
tion for the cloth or fiber and for the color¬ 
ing matter • so that, acted upon by this 
substance, the fibers of the cloth will unite 
with the coloring matter and be permanent¬ 
ly dyed. This third substance is called a 
mordant, from a French word meaning to 
bite; the old idea being that the mordant 
bit into the fiber, thus opening it up to the 
action of the dye. Every natural dye has 
its own particular mordant, most of the 
mordants being found among the metallic 
oxides. Before chemical research threw 
light upon dyeing processes the dyer work¬ 
ed blindly. If successful in a particular 
11-30 


instance the recipe was preserved, and fol¬ 
lowed carefully for similar results. Often 
failure resulted, the cause of which it was 
impossible to explain. At present chem¬ 
ical laboratories are erected in connection 
with the larger dyeing establishments, and 
methods are regulated with scientific pre¬ 
cision. 

Certain questions connected with the 
principles of dyeing have occasioned much 
discussion. Some scientists regard the un¬ 
ion between fiber and dye as a chemical ac¬ 
tion. Since, however, any dye may be 
removed from cloth or yarn and dissolved 
by certain agents, while the fiber remains 
utterly uninjured, it would seem that the 
action is mechanical, rather than chemical. 
A view held by some chemists is that the 
dyeing of wool is a chemical combination, 
but that the dyeing of cotton is merely a 
fixation of the color in the pores of the 
fiber. 

It is evident that the principal part of 
every dyeing operation is the finding of a 
proper mordant and its successful applica¬ 
tion. Sometimes the fabric or yarn is treat¬ 
ed with the mordant and then immersed in 
the dye bath. Sometimes the cloth is dyed 
first and then treated with the mordant. 
Sometimes mordant and dye are combined 
and applied to the fabric simultaneously. 
A little change in the strength of a mor¬ 
dant may effect a decided change in tint or 
shade. Thus a wide field for variety of 
shades is offered the dyer. For example, 
logwood alone will not dye cotton. With 
the proper use of mordants, logwood may 
be made to dye cotton in all shades of lav¬ 
ender, violet, purple, lilac, and slate. 

In the manufacture of textile fabrics the 
dyeing may be done at various stages. 
Sometimes the raw fiber receives the dye. 
By this method, called stock dyeing, the 
color is fixed more firmly and is less likely 
to fade or lose its brilliancy. The spun 
yarn may be dyed, but it is difficult to be 
sure the dye enters the inner fibers of a 
tightly twisted yarn. The cheapest and 
most common method is called piece dye¬ 
ing, which means that the woven fabric is 
dyed. The labor, in this case, Is accom¬ 
plished by machinery, and there is less 
waste of expensive dyestuffs than occurs 


DYESTUFFS 


in stock and yarn dyeing. As has been 
said, cotton has less affinity than wool for 
natural dye solutions. Until artificial 
dyes came into use, therefore, the dyeing 
of cotton was a difficult process. The azo 
dyestuffs, a class of coal-tar colors, how¬ 
ever, can be applied to cotton without a 
mordant, and produce brilliant and lasting 
colors. This fact causes azo dyes to be 
regarded as a most important class of ar¬ 
tificial dyes. 

Dyestuffs, substances used for dyeing. 
Any dyestuff in solution is called a dye. 
Dyestuffs are known as natural or artificial. 
The natural dyestuffs are mostly of animal 
or vegetable origin, and are prepared by 
purely mechanical processes, such as grind¬ 
ing, crushing, or simply steeping, as in the 
case of certain chips and barks. Artificial 
dyes are prepared by chemical processes 
from coal-tar products. 

The larger number of natural dyestuffs 
are of vegetable origin. They are from 
various parts of certain trees, plants, and 
shrubs. Logwood, used for red dyes, and, 
in combination with other substances, for 
purples, violets, and blues, is obtained 
from the chips of a Central American tree. 
Yellow fustic, from the Brazilian wood of 
that name; young fustic, from an Italian 
shrub, a variety of sumac; quercitron, from 
the inner bark of the dyer’s oak of eastern 
North America; Persian berries, from the 
Levant; and turmeric, from the East In¬ 
dies,—all yield yellow dyes. The shell of 
the pomegranate yields thirty shades of yel¬ 
low dye. The roots of madder cultivated 
in the East Indies, the Levant, France, and 
Holland yield the dye that produces, not 
only the turkey reds, but madder, purple, 
orange, and brown. The Cape Verde Is¬ 
lands and the northwestern coasts of 
Europe produce a seaweed that yields a 
rich dye. Indigo, obtained from the leaves 
and herbaceous parts of the indigo plant, 
is one of the most important dyes. Fifty 
shades of blue are produced from it. Su¬ 
mac is raised in the Mediterranean coun¬ 
tries for dyestuff, Sicily producing the best. 
It is gathered also in Virginia. Gall nuts, 
produced on the leaves and twigs of oaks 
and other trees by the punctures of various 
egg-laying insects, yield a valuable dyestuff. 


Among animal dyes cochineal stands 
easily first in importance. The famous 
Tyrian purple is produced by a fluid se¬ 
creted by a shellfish. Sepia is obtained 
from the common cuttlefish. 

Until about fifty years ago the dyer de¬ 
pended entirely upon these natural prod¬ 
ucts for his dyes, mixing and preparing 
them according to certain recipes; know¬ 
ing, perhaps, under what conditions he was 
most successful, but not knowing why. In 
other words, his knowledge was wholly un¬ 
scientific. The development of applied 
chemistry has opened up a new source of 
dyestuffs and has revolutionized dyeing 
processes. The dyer no longer works in 
the dark, but is guided by scientific princi¬ 
ples. While the natural dyestuffs are still 
in use to some extent, they have been large¬ 
ly superseded by artificial colors, produced 
indirectly from coal-tar. Coal-tar is a thick, 
black, opaque liquid, which condenses in 
the pipes when gas is distilled from coal. 
Coal-tar was considered formerly a waste 
product; but the chemist has succeeded in 
obtaining from it many useful substances. 
It is the most abundant source of many 
beautiful dyes. These are classed frequent¬ 
ly as aniline dyes, because aniline was the 
first substance discovered from which these 
dyestuffs were produced. There are, how¬ 
ever, other groups of coal-tar colors besides 
those belonging to the aniline group. Coal- 
tar colors are more brilliant and give a 
greater variety of tint and shade than nat¬ 
ural dyes. For some time after their dis¬ 
covery they were regarded as more tran¬ 
sitory, especially if fabrics dyed with these 
colors were exposed to sunlight. This 
objection has been overcome to a large ex¬ 
tent. At the present time the primary col¬ 
ors, as well as tints and shades produced 
by combinations of the primary colors, 
are extracted from coal-tar products. Some 
of these artificial colors have the same 
chemical constituents as the natural dye. 
A French chemist estimates that fourteen 
thousand shades and tints can be pro¬ 
duced from coal-tar colors. 

The dyer may purchase his dyestuffs pre¬ 
pared by the chemical manufacturer. From 
these the dyes or solutions are prepared at 
the dye works. The larger dye works have 


DYNAMICS—DYNAMO 


chemical laboratories in connection, and 
prepare their own dyestuffs. According to 
the last United States census, 37,000 peo¬ 
ple are employed in the manufacture of 
dyes, and in dyeing and finishing cloth and 
its materials. The demand for dyes has 
become so great that $20,000,000 worth of 
madder is made from chemicals yearly. 

Dynamics, that portion of physical sci¬ 
ence which treats of force and the laws 
governing it. There may be properly con¬ 
sidered two phases of the subject: statics, 
which treats of forces acting but resulting 
in no motion; and kinetics, when motion is 
produced. To this latter only was the term 
dynamics formerly applied, the name me¬ 
chanics being used for what is now known 
as dynamics. The three fundamental laws 
upon which the science of dynamics rests, 
widely known as Newton’s laws of motion, 
are: 

1. Every body continues in its state of 
rest or of uniform motion in a straight line 
unless acted upon by some external force. 

2. Change of motion is proportional to 
the impressed force and takes place in the 
direction in which the force acts. 

3. To every action there is an equal 
and opposite reaction. 

That part of dynamics having to do 
with the application of forces to fluids is 
sometimes distinguished as hydrodynamics, 
with its subdivisions hydrostatics and hy¬ 
drokinetics. Sometimes these terms are 
limited to liquids, the word pneumatics be¬ 
ing used with the compressible fluids, the 
gases. 

See Mechanics; Force. 

Dynamite, or giant powder, a prepara¬ 
tion much used in blasting. The bursting 
or disruptive force of dynamite is about 
eight times that of gunpowder. It was 
invented by Nobel in 1866. It consists of 
some absorbent material soaked to its full 
capacity with nitroglycerin, and is designed 
to be safer in carriage and use. The best 
absorbent is a fine, white floury earth found 
in Hanover, which absorbs and renders 
safe about three times its own weight of 
nitroglycerin. The mixture resembles 
heavy brown sugar in appearance. It is 
molded into cartridges or sticks, and is 
coated with paraffine paper. It is safe 


against ordinary dropping and jars, but 
can be exploded by a sudden shock and 
flash like that produced by a percussion 
cap. It is difficult to explode frozen dyna¬ 
mite. Dynamite is used by the farmer in 
blasting out stumps, and by the miner in 
ledges. A stick of dynamite exploded in a 
hole drilled into a ledge will do the work 
of many men. Without dynamite railroad 
tunnels could be constructed only at enor¬ 
mous expense. In 1909 the engineers of the 
Lackawanna Railway reported that 5,000,- 
000 pounds of dynamite would be required 
in blasting the way for a twenty-eight mile 
cut-off. In such a case the dynamite 
is made near the spot. In 1867, the year 
after its invention, eleven tons of dyna¬ 
mite were made. Now over 50,000 tons 
are made yearly in the United States alone. 
There are large factories in the hills east 
of San Francisco Bay. The largest dyna¬ 
mite factory in the world is near Ardeer, 
Scotland. Dynamite is sold at retail at 
from twelve to twenty cents a pound. 
Life insurance companies rank the manu¬ 
facture of dynamite as the most hazardous 
occupation in the world. See Nobel; Ni¬ 
troglycerin. 

Dynamo, or Dynamo-Electric Ma¬ 
chine, the mechanism now mainly used for 
the generation of electric currents. It is 
a machine which transforms mechanical 
energy into electrical. The essential parts 
of a dynamo are a magnet and a coil of 
wire which is made to revolve in the mag¬ 
netic field. The principle involved is that 
discovered by Faraday in 1831, that when¬ 
ever a conductor cuts magnetic lines of 
force, a current is generated in the con¬ 
ductor. In all the larger dynamos, electro¬ 
magnets are used, in which the magnetism 
is induced either wholly or in part by the 
current being generated. It is common to 
speak of the magnet as the field magnet and 
the rotating coil of wire as the armature. 
Since the direction of the current depends 
upon the direction in which the lines of 
force are cut, the resulting current is one 
which reverses in direction with each half 
revolution of the coil unless a special de¬ 
vice, known as a commutator, is used to 
rectify it. This commutator consists of a 
pumber of metal segments insulated from 


DYNAMOMETER—DYSPEPSIA 


each other and from the axis, but which 
connect with the ends of the coils in the 
armature. Metal brushes, held against the 
commutator by springs, serve to conduct 
the current where it is to be used. Every 
time the current reverses in the arma¬ 
ture, it is reversed in the brushes so that 
it remains constant in direction in the ex¬ 
ternal circuit. A dynamo without a com¬ 
mutator is often called an alternator since 
it produces what is known as an alternating 
current. The term generator is often used 
as synonymous with dynamo. 

Dynamos differ widely in pattern as well 
as size. A small one with a permanent 
magnet, such as is used in a medical bat¬ 
tery, is known as a magneto. The simplest 
dynamo has but two magnetic poles when 
it is said to be bipolar; if several, it is 
called multipolar. In some larger ma¬ 
chines the coil of wire is stationary and the 
field magnets revolve. Dynamos have been 
built capable of generating thousands of 
horsepower. It is well to note that dyna¬ 
mos do not create any energy but must have 
steam or water to produce the rotation. In¬ 
stead of utilizing waterpower directly for 
motive purposes, it is now usual to generate 
electricity by dynamos directly connected 
to the turbine water-wheels, from which it 
may be readily distributed. 

Dynamom'eter, an instrument used for 
the measurement of force. A simple form 
is the common spring balance. A dynamom¬ 
eter is often used to determine the pull 
of an animal or engine, the draught of a 
machine, such as a plow, or the strength of 
a wire or chain. The determination of the 
work done may be calculated by multiply¬ 
ing the force as indicated on the dynamom¬ 
eter by the distance through which the 
force acts; and dividing this product by the 
time taken to do the work gives the power, 
or the rate at which the work is done. 

Dyne, the absolute unit of force, based 
upon the fundamental units of the metric 
system. It is the amount of force which 
will give to a gram mass in one second an 
acceleration of one centimeter per second. 
It is approximately equal to 1/980 of the 


attraction of the earth for one gram of 
matter. The corresponding unit in the 
English system is the poundal, which is the 
force required to give to a pound mass an 
acceleration of one foot per second. The 
latter is about 1/32 of the weight of 
a pound. There are 13,825 dynes in a 
poundal. See Force. 

Dyspepsia, dis-pep'si-a or sha, a Greek 
word, the literal meaning of which is diffi¬ 
cult digestion, and which designates a con¬ 
dition in which the functions of the 
stomach are interfered with. It may be 
caused by over-eating, by eating unsuitable 
food, by insufficient mastication, by eating 
when one is overheated, overtired, or suffer¬ 
ing from mental strain, or by the excessive 
use of alcohol. The symptoms, any or all 
of which may be present, are discomfort 
or pain in the region of the stomach, coated 
tongue, loss of appetite, headache, flatu¬ 
lence, heartburn, nausea and mental de¬ 
pression. In mild cases of dyspepsia the 
symptoms amount to little more than dis¬ 
comfort, and last usually only a day or two. 
In severe cases they become much more 
pronounced and continue for several days 
or weeks. By far the greatest sufferers 
from dyspepsia are those whose condition 
has become chronic, through neglect of the 
warning given by the milder attacks. 

Since individual cases differ widely it is 
impossible to name a cure. The sufferer 
must, in many cases, “work out his own sal¬ 
vation” by learning what food he may eat 
with impunity and under what conditions 
he may eat it. It is conceded generally that 
most people eat too much and eat too fast. 

These habits are especially injurious to 
the dyspeptic. A small quantity of food, 
thoroughly masticated and eaten with no 
feeling of haste or anxiety, may be digested 
properly, while the same food eaten in 
haste or under mental strain will cause 
hours of suffering. The patent medicines 
advertised to cure dyspepsia contain, in 
most cases, large quantities of alcohol and 
afford temporary relief only, the distressing 
symptoms recurring later with increased 
severity. 


E 


\ 


Eads, eedz, James Buchanan (1820- 
1887), a celebrated American engineer. He 
was born at Lawrenceburg, Indiana, May 
23, 1820. He died at Nassau, Bahama Is¬ 
lands, March 8, 1887. Perhaps no other 
American engineer has been connected with 
more notable enterprises. In young man¬ 
hood he won a reputation by devising some 
barges for raising sunken steamers. In 
1861, at the call of the Federal govern¬ 
ment, he constructed eight ironclad steam¬ 
ers inside of one hundred days. He also 
built other gunboats and mortar boats, all 
of use in opening up the Mississippi and 
its tributaries. In 1867-74 he built the 
famous Eads Bridge across the Mississippi 
at St. Louis. It is a mammoth steel arch 
structure of three spans, resting on stone 
pillars sent down to bed rock far below 
the bottom of a treacherous river. It cost 
$6,500,000. The last great work with 
which he was. connected was the improve¬ 
ment of the mouth of the Mississippi. He 
designed the system of willow mattresses 
and stonework by which the water was 
confined to a narrow passage through 
which it scoured a deep channel. See 
Bridge; Jetty. 

Eagle, a bird of prey belonging to the 
falcon or hawk family. The golden eagle 
inhabits the mountainous parts of Europe, 
India, Africa, and North America. It is 
still found in the Highlands of Scotland. 
It is the eagle which not only furnished 
the chieftain’s plume, but of which so 
many thrilling stories are told concerning 
the carrying away and the hazardous res¬ 
cue of children. Shepherds especially 
dread the vicinity of a nest of eaglets, to 
the support of which so many lambs must 
be sacrificed. They climb the most in¬ 
accessible cliffs to destroy an eagle’s nest. 
The golden eagle is not infrequent in the 
Rocky Mountains, but it is seldom seen 
east of the Mississippi River. It may be 
distinguished by a yellowish head and 
neck, with legs feathered quite to the toes. 

The bald eagle is so called from the 


whiteness of its head and neck, but it is 
not bald. As distinguished from the slight¬ 
ly smaller golden eagle, its leg is bare part 
way to the knee. This bird has been adopt¬ 
ed as the national emblem. The length 
may be stated at 33 inches for the male and 
35.5 for the female, with wing expanse of 
over 80 inches. Bald eagles breed through¬ 
out North America, nesting in trees not too 
far from water. They live chiefly on dead 
fish found along the shore, and on fish 
which they force the American osprey or 
fish-hawk to surrender. Pathetic tales are 
told of the fish-hawk winging home to its 
young with a hard earned fish in its talons, 
only to be intercepted by a lying-in-wait 
robber baron and forced to drop its fish, 
perhaps in sight and hearing of its hungry 
young screaming for supper. 

Historically the eagle, species uncertain, 
is considered a noble bird, ranking with the 
lion, the king of beasts. Among ancients, 
the Persians and the Romans, and late$ 
France, Russia, Prussia, and Austria have 
adopted the eagle as a military symbol. It 
is to be regretted that traditional associa¬ 
tion of ideas should have led to the selec¬ 
tion of a homely, greedy, lazy robber, with 
a maniacal scream,—the American bald 
eagle,—as the emblem of the United 
States. W. T. Hornaday, an appreciative 
and an intelligent observer of birds, takes 
the opposite view: 

“Even when in flight, an eagle can be 
distinguished from all other birds by its 
slow and powerful wing-strokes, and the 
great breadth of its wings, especially near 
their extremities. To see one perching on 
the topmost branch of a dead tree, over¬ 
looking a water prospect, with its snowy 
head shining in the sunlight like frosted 
silver, is enough to thrill any beholder.” 

The eagle is frequently referred to in lit¬ 
erature. Thus Smollett speaks of the spirit 
of Independence as “Lord of the lion heart 
and eagle eye.” “Methinks I see,” says 
Milton, “a noble and puissant nation as an 
eagle mewing her mighty youth and kin- 


EAR—EARLY 


dling her undazzled eyes at the full midday 
beam.” “On eagles' wings immortal scan¬ 
dals fly,” is Juvenal’s graphic metaphor. 

See Hawk; Falcon. 

He clasps the crag with hooked hands; 

Close to the sun in lonely lands, 

Ring’d with the azure world, he stands. 

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; 

He watches from his mountain walls; 

And like a thunderbolt he falls. 

—Tennyson. 

Ear, the organ of hearing. In its sim¬ 
plest form, as seen in some of the lower 
animalb, the ear is simply a sac of liquid, 
in which the end of the auditory nerve is 
expanded. The ears of the locust are situ¬ 
ated on each side of the basal joint of the 
abdomen. The green grasshoppers and 
katydids hear through ears situated on 
their front legs. These ears look like little 
scars. The mosquito is believed to hear 
through sensitive spots on its antennae or 
feelers. 

The human ear is rather complex. It 
consists of three divisions,—the outer, or 
external ear, the middle ear, and the inner 
ear, or labyrinth. The peculiar folds and 
passages of the outer ear are of service in 
catching sound, and also in enabling the 
hearer to determine from what direction it 
comes. The middle ear is an air chamber, 
communicating with the throat by an air 
passage or tube, called the eustachian tube. 
The ear chamber is separated from the out¬ 
er and from the inner ear by membranes 
giving it the structure of a drum. Three 
small, movable bones, called the bones of 
the ear, reach from the outer membrane to 
the inner. The inner ear, or labyrinth, is 
filled with liquids. The auditory nerve, 
which comes from the brain, terminates 
here. 

Sound reaches the brain as follows. The 
vibrations of the atmosphere set the outer 
membrane in motion. This agitates the 
bones of the ear. They set up a vibration 
in the inner membrane, which, in turn, 
shakes the liquids in the labyrinth, thus 
disturbing the ends of the auditory nerve, 
along which the sensation flies to the brain. 
A forceful vibration gives the impression 
of a loud noise. If agreeable vibrations 
come frequently, they give the impression 


of music. The human ear is able to note 
a sound having a frequency of from 32 to 
38,000 vibrations per second. A rare 
ear can go to 50,000. The ear of a cat 
is capable of hearing an extraordinarily 
high note. No doubt the world, especially 
the insect world, is full of sounds quite in¬ 
telligible to many ears, but unknown to 
the human ear. 

The linings and the membrane of the 
outer ear are kept moist by the excretion 
of ear wax. When, as often happens, 
especially in old age, the membrane be¬ 
comes dry and inflexible, and thus unable 
to vibrate, partial or entire deafness en¬ 
sues. In case of defective hearing an ear 
trumpet is often used to collect the sound 
waves and thus increase their intensity. 

See Sound; Deaf Mutes. 

Earl, erl, in England, a title of nobil¬ 
ity, ranking next below duke and marquis. 
The oldest son of an earl is a viscount. 
The coronet of an earl consists of a gold 
band or circlet, from which rise eight lofty 
rays of gold, supporting pearls. In shape 
these rays look something like the elevated 
eyes of a snail. Between each pair of rays 
is a gold leaf. The earl’s coronet, like 
that of the duke’s may be closed with a vel- * 
vet cap, if so desired. The wife of an earl 
is called a countess. She is entitled to wear 
a coronet much resembling that of her hus¬ 
band, except that the rays are shorter. An 
earl is entitled to appear in the House of 
Lords wearing a scarlet robe trimmed with 
ermine. In writing to an earl, the sover¬ 
eign addresses him as “True and well be¬ 
loved cousin.” See Duke; Precedence. 

Early, Jubal Anderson (1816-1894), 
a Confederate general. He was a native 
of Virginia. His education was received at 
West Point, from which institution he 
graduated in 1837. He served in the 
Seminole and Mexican Wars, and then 
took up the practice of law in his native 
state. He was sent to the legislature 'and 
was appointed State’s attorney. When the 
Civil War broke out, though opposed to 
secession, he entered the Confederate Army 
as colonel, and helped to win the battle of 
Bull Run. He was in the battle of Gettys¬ 
burg, as a major general, and in 1864, 
commanded in the Shenandoah Valley, 


EARRING—EARTHHOUSE 


where he was defeated by Sheridan. De¬ 
feated again by Custer at Waynesboro he 
was relieved of his command, although he 
is still considered worthy of high rank 
among the soldiers of the Confederate 
Army. 

Earring, an ornament suspended by a 
ring or hook passing through the lobe of 
the ear. In all historical times, earrings 
have been made of gold or silver adorned 
with precious stones. The earring is believ¬ 
ed to be of oriental origin. Certainly its 
use was known among the most ancient 
nations. Originally it was, no doubt, worn 
as a charm to frighten away evil spirits. 
Among the oriental races earrings were 
in general use for both sexes. Among the 
Hebrews, the Egyptians, the Greeks and 
Romans, however, they were worn only by 
women. Among Europeans the wearing of 
earrings is now confined largely to the two 
extremes of society,—the be jeweled rich 
and the peasantry. One who has observed 
steerage passengers coming ashore at New 
York is struck by the large number of men, 
particularly Italians, who wear earrings. 

Earth, the planet third in order from 
the sun. Mercury and Venus are nearer 
the sun. The general shape of the earth 
is spherical. Whenever the earth’s shadow 
falls on the moon it has a circular outline. 
The curvature of the earth’s surface is such 
that, if three stakes in a line be driven 
half a mile apart, so that the tops of the 
first and third are on a water level with 
the top of the second, it will be found, on 
sighting across, that a straight line from 
the top of the first stake to the top of the 
third cuts about eight inches below the 
top of the second stake. In other words 
the surface of a lake curves about eight 
inches per mile. 

Scientists have actually made numerous 
measurements—a score or more—of con¬ 
siderable portions of a meridian, that is to 
say, a north and south line. One measure¬ 
ment extended from Hammerfest, in the 
north of Norway, to the mouth of the Dan¬ 
ube ; another from the Himalayas to the 
southern point of Hindustan. From these 
measurements it has been found that a de¬ 
gree of a meridian is 3,000 feet longer in 
Sweden than in southern India; in other 


words, that the earth is flattened at the 
poles. 

Various computations agree so well that 
it is believed the following dimensions of 
the earth are correct, to within a fifth of 
a mile. 

Equatorial diameter . 7,926.614 miles. 

Polar diameter . 7,899.742 miles. 

Difference . 26.872 miles. 

Average diameter . 7,920 miles. 

Equatorial circumference ... 24,912 miles. 

Area of surface.196,971,984 sq. miles. 

Weight in pounds including 

atmosphere .6,666,225,819,600,000,000,000 

The earth has three motions and possibly 
four: 

1. It rotates on its axis once in each twen¬ 

ty-four hours. The rotary speed of 
the earth’s surface varies from zero 
at the poles to one thousand miles an 
hour on the equator. 

2. It revolves about the sun in an ellipti¬ 

cal orbit once in each year, flying at 
a rate of about 66,600 miles an hour 
in its travels. This orbit is fairly 
regular, yet it is thought that the 
earth wobbles on its axis a trifle, and 
is jolted out of its path 4,000 miles 
or so. 

3. It follows the sun in its travels at an 

estimated rate of 150,000,000 miles 
a year. 

4. Very possibly the universe may be 

changing its position in space. 

The density of the earth’s crust is about 
three times that of water. The average 
density of the earth is 5.5 times that of 
water, from which it is argued that the in¬ 
terior is about eight or nine times as dense 
as water. Inasmuch as pressure tends to 
solidify, and heat tends to liquefy, it is not 
known whether the interior is solid or fluid; 
but it is pretty well agreed that the interior 
is dense and intensely hot. 

See Geography; Equator; Altitude*; 
Latitude ; Longitude ; Season ; Planets. 
Earthenware. See Pottery. 
Earthhouse, a name given to peculiar 
underground dwellings found in northern 
Scotland and in Ireland. They are thought 
to have been the dwellings of the Piets. 
They are constructed, usually, of loose 
stone walls built upward and brought to- 








EARTHQUAKE 


gether until the top could be covered with 
large slabs. They were then covered with 
mounds of earth. As many as forty or 
fifty of these strange dwellings are found 
in a single group or village. The simplest 
dwellings, from four to ten feet in width, 
perhaps sixty feet in length, and deep 
enough to permit standing upright, have 
but one room; others, more pretentious, 
have a number of chambers. Naturally 
enough, they were constructed in dry 
ground. They were entered by a small 
hole in the top. Stone handmills, ashes, 
bones, deer’s horns, round plates of stone 
and slate, earthenware cups, bronze swords, 
and gold rings have been found in these 
underground houses. It is thought that 
they may have served rather as places of 
concealment in time of danger than as reg¬ 
ular dwellings. In some cases these under¬ 
ground villages are found beneath tilled 
land, where the plow has been passing 
above them for centuries. 

Earthquake, a sudden movement of 
the earth’s surface. The passage of a heavy 
railway train creates a vibration, differing 
from an earthquake chiefly in intensity. 
The causes of earthquakes are various. 
Sometimes an extensive crack forms in 
certain rock strata, and the rock on one 
side of the crack settles; or else the roof 
of an extensive subterranean cavity falls 
in. Other shocks originate in disturbances 
arising from an outburst of volcanic lava. 
It is thought that nearly all earthquake 
movements originate within the upper ten 
miles of the earth’s crust, and most of 
them within two or three miles of the sur¬ 
face. The destructive influence of an 
earthquake shock is due rather to its ex¬ 
treme quickness than to the extent of vi¬ 
bration. It is believed that no earth¬ 
quake vibration ever reaches a foot in am¬ 
plitude, and that the earth’s crust moves. 
usually but a very small fraction of an 
inch. The nature of an earthquake shock 
may be illustrated by giving a table a 
sharp, quick, light tgp with a hammer. A 
marble lying on the table will bound to a 
height of several inches, although the sur¬ 
face of the table cannot have vibrated, it¬ 
self, more than one-ten-thousandth part 
of that distance. In this way a slight tre¬ 


mor or jar of the earth is quite sufficient 
to fling people out of bed, throw dishes out 
of a pantry, or bring stone walls tumbling 
down. 

No part of the earth’s surface seems to 
be entirely free from earthquakes, although 
they appear to have been more frequent or 
else better observed near the seacoast. The 
list of recorded earthquakes now includes 
about 7,000. In the year 1876, for in¬ 
stance, there were 104. 

In 1755 the city of Lisbon was almost 
blotted out of existence by a sea wave 
caused by an earthquake. In 1811 an 
earthquake visited the Mississippi Valley. 
Five thousand square miles in the vicinity 
of New Madrid were lowered ten feet on 
an average. Productive farms were con¬ 
verted into hopeless swamps and the own¬ 
ers were forced to seek homes elsewhere. 
One of the most notable earthquakes in the 
United States occurred at Charleston, 
South Carolina, August 31, 1866. Nearly 
one hundred people were killed. Several 
million dollars’ worth of property was de¬ 
stroyed. In 1868 the coast of Peru and 
Ecuador was swamped by huge waves cre¬ 
ated by an earthquake shock. They pour¬ 
ed over the land with a depth of sixty feet. 
The city of San Francisco was damaged 
by the same series of shocks. In 1891 
Japan experienced a notable earthquake. 
A crack was traced for a distance of forty 
miles. The earth and rock sank from two 
to twenty feet along one side of the crack. 
In 1897 an earthquake visited India. Myr¬ 
iads of fish were killed in the Ganges as 
though by an explosion of a dynamite 
cartridge. 

On the morning of April 18, 1906, the 
region about San Francisco, California, was 
visited by a very destructive earthquake. 
The damage to public buildings in various 
towns of the vicinity was great. The de¬ 
struction in San Francisco was simply ap¬ 
palling. Huge structures were shaken to 
the ground; water mains burst. To add to 
the horror, fire broke out. Between earth¬ 
quake and flames, eight square miles of 
buildings were almost entirely destroyed. 
Many public buildings of the city, banks, 
hotels, an immense ferry station, and China¬ 
town w-re wrecked utterly. Two hundred 


EARTHWORM 


thousand people were driven out of their 
homes. It is estimated that the loss of life 
reached 452 and that $200,000,000 worth 
of property was destroyed. Later in the 
same year a violent shock' was felt on the 
coast of Chile, at Valparaiso and elsewhere. 

In 1908 a terrible earthquake visited 
southern Italy. A region about seventy- 
five miles in diameter, including the north¬ 
eastern part of Sicily and the toe of Italy, 
literally shuddered and fell a few feet in¬ 
to the bed of the ocean. The shock was so 
terrific that almost all buildings within 
this territory were shaken to the ground. 
Messina and Reggio, cities rising from the 
water’s edge, tumbled in ruins. Huge tidal 
waves came up, covering the debris with 
mud and washing thousands of fugitives 
out to sea. Where mud did not flow in, 
fires broke out. In a few hours’ time the 
homes of 200,000 people in these two cities 
alone were either buried out of sight, or 
converted into ashes. The greater number 
of the inhabitants never escaped from the 
ruins. In many of the small towns half 
of the people met their death. The catas¬ 
trophe was so extensive and the loss of life 
so great that no accurate report will ever 
be possible, but it is estimated that 200,000 
people lost their lives. 

The following is a partial list of the 
notable earthquakes: 


NOTABLE EARTHQUAKES. 


Place 

Catania, Sicily . 

Syria. 

Cilicia . 

Naples . 

Lisbon . 

Ragusa. 

Schamaki . 

Port Royal, Jamaica 

Sicily . 

Aquila, Italy 
Jeddo (Tokio) . . . . 
Abruzzi, Italy 

Algiers . 

Palermo . 

China . 

Naples . 

Lima and Callao ... 

Grand Cairo. 

Kaschan, Persia .... 

Lisbon . 

Fez, Morocco . 

Syria. 



Lives 

Year 

Lost 

. .1137 

15,000 

. .1158 

20,000 

..1268 

60,000 

..1456 

40,000 

..1626 

30,000 

..1667 

5,000 

..1672 

80,000 

..1692 

3,000 

..1693 

100.000 

..1703 

5,000 

..1703 

200.000 

..1706 

15,000 

..1716 

20,000 

..1726 

6,000 

..1731 

100.000 

..1732 

1.900 

..1746 

18 000 

..1754 

40,000 

..1755 

40,000 

..1755 

50,000 

..1755 

12,000 

..1759 

20,000 


Lives 

Place Year Lost 

Martinique .1767 1,600 

Tauris .1780 45,000 

Calabria. 1783 25,000 

Bolivia . 1797 40,000 

Naples .1805 6,000 

Kutch, India.1819 2,000 

Aleppo .1822 20,000 

Murcia, Spain.1828 6,000 

Canton, China. 1830 6,000 

Calabria. 1835 1,000 

Martinique . 1839 700 

Cape Haytien, S. D. 1842 5,000 

Point-a-Pitre, Guadeloupe .1843 5,000 

Great Sanger .1856 3,000 

Calabria, Italy . 1857 10,000 

- Quito . 1859 5,000 

Erzeroum, Asia Minor. 1859 6,000 

Mendoza, South America . 1861 7,000 

Manila . 1863 1,000 

Mitylene .1867 1,000 

Peru and Ecuador . 1867 25,000 

Santander, Colombia.1875 14,000 

Scio .1882 4,000 

Cashmere . 1885 3,000 

The Riviera .1887 2,300 

Yunnan, China .1888 4,000 

Valparaiso, Chile . 1906 1,500 

San Francisco . 1906 452 

Kingston, Jamaica .1907 1,100 

Sicily and Calabria.1908 200,000 


Total . 1,392,552 

Earthworm, or Angleworm, a well 

known genus of worms including many es¬ 
sentially similar species. A large number 
of cutworms, silk worms, measuring worms, 
and army worms are not real worms at all. 
They are the young, the larvae—of corre¬ 
sponding butterflies, millers, moths, and flies 
of all kinds; but the earthworm once is 
an earthworm always,—a genuine worm, 
unchanged save in size from the time it 
hatches from the egg. The body is cylin¬ 
drical, tapering to the tip, and slightly flat¬ 
tened at the rear end. It is covered with 
a soft, somewhat slimy skin. A straight 
digestive tube tract or intestine runs with¬ 
out coil or twist through the center of the 
entire body. Between this inner tube and 
the skin, which may be called an outer tube, 
there is a space comparable to a hollow 
cylinder. This space, that is to say, the 
body, is divided by cross portions or braces 
into many rings or segments easily counted 
by the corresponding bands which encir¬ 
cle the body. As high as 120 segments 
have been found. The jaw of a vertebrate 
























































EARWIG 


animal works up and down. The lips of 
the earthworm open, not up and down, but 
sidewise. The mouth slit is not horizontal; 
it is vertical. 

Under the skin a double set of muscles is 
found. One long set runs lengthwise; the 
other, a circular set, runs around the body. 
When the worm desires to shorten its body 
it shortens the long muscles. When it de¬ 
sires to extend its body it shortens the cir¬ 
cular muscles literally squeezing its body 
out lengthwise. The under part of the 
body is furnished with short, stiff bristles, 
four pairs to a segment. These bristles are 
controlled by muscles and may be set to 
point forward or backward, or they may 
be drawn up into little pits where they 
are not noticeable. If the body be drawn 
up short by the long muscles, and the bris¬ 
tles be pointed backward, the body will be 
pushed out forward when the circular 
muscles act. If, under similar conditions, 
the bristles are pointed forward, the body 
is extended backward and retreats. On a 
surface so theoretically smooth that no foot¬ 
hold could be obtained, the body would ex¬ 
tend equally in either direction, and no 
change of place could be made. The same 
is true of a person, however, or of any an¬ 
imal. Locomotion is effected by gaining a 
foothold and pushing the body forward, an 
interesting operation to observe. 

The earthworm has a nervous system. 
A double nerve cord, with an enlargement 
in each segment, runs beneath the intestine 
and ends in a sort of brain in the shape of 
a ring or collar surrounding the swallow. 
There is no evidence that an earthworm can 
hear. It has no eyes; yet it is sensitive to 
light and can tell the difference between 
day and night. Without doubt the sense of 
touch is well developed, as well as that of 
heat and cold. It seems also to have a 
sense of smell. 

The body is provided with a regular sys¬ 
tem of blood circulation. The chief or¬ 
gans are a tube running the length of the 
back and another following the lower sur¬ 
face, through which the blood is driven by 
muscular action of the tube walls. The 
blood is red, due to coloring matter in the 
liquid itself, not to floating bodies as in 
the case of man. 


The entire skin serves as lungs. Living 
bloodvessels lie in the surface, separated 
from the air by a thin membrane only. As 
long as this membrane is moist, air passes; 
but if an earthworm be kept in warm, dry 
air, the surface of the body dries and the 
animal smothers for want of air. 

The home of the earthworm is a burrow, 
—a slender hole going down, it may be 
several feet, always into moist earth, and 
in the winter time below the reach of frost. 

The chief food is earth, from which the, 
worm extracts vegetable and animal matter. 
The spiral heap of fine earth found about 
the entrance to its burrow is the earth 
which the worm has eaten and then voided 
or cast away. Leaves are frequently drag¬ 
ged into burrows to be eaten when half de¬ 
cayed. The worm has mere lobes for lips 
or jaws, no real mouth cavity. The work 
of boring burrows and of seizing leaves is 
done by the muscular end of the swallow 
or pharynx. 

The earthworm is an animal of agricul¬ 
tural importance. By boring deep it forms 
tubes which admit air and rainwater to the 
soil. Burrowing mellows the soil. The cast¬ 
ings may seem trifling, but investigations 
undertaken by Mr. Charles Darwin of Eng¬ 
land go to show that, in a grassplot well 
peopled by earthworms, their castings 
amount to an inch in five years, or twenty 
inches in a century; enough in the course 
of time to bury a city. Mr. Darwin is of 
the opinion that in many parts of Eng¬ 
land no less than ten tons of soil are eaten 
and brought to the surface per acre each 
year. The grinding that takes place in 
the gizzard of the earthworm produces 
rock flour of fineness and fertility. 

See Soil. 

Earwig, a long, narrow insect resem¬ 
bling the beetle in some respects. The 
mouth is formed for biting. The wing 
covers are short; the hind wings are very 
peculiar. The base of the wing is fur¬ 
nished with ribs like those of a Japanese 
fan. These are folded together fan 
fashion. The broad end of the wing is 
then folded twice crosswise, so as to short¬ 
en or crinkle it up. The tail end of 
the body has a pair of appendages re¬ 
sembling forceps. Earwigs are found on 


EAST—E. AFRICAN PROTECTORATE 


the Pacific coast and in the Gulf States, 
but are rare in the northeastern part of 
the United States. In Europe they are 
very troublesome in the flower and the 
vegetable garden. They eat the corollas 
of flowers and devour the tender parts of 
vegetation generally. There are specimens 
of 200 different species in the collection of 
the British Museum. The common name 
is derived from a popular belief that this 
insect is prone to crawl into the ear of a 
sleeping person. 

East, in geography, the direction of 
the rising sun. The east has been invested 
with a certain sacred character from the 
earliest times. The ancient pagans placed 
their altars in the eastern part of their 
temples, that they might sacrifice to the 
rising sun. From time immemorial it has 
been customary among many peoples to 
bury with the feet toward the east, in 
order that the dead may face the rising 
sun. Although the Mohammedan prays 
with his face toward Mecca, in whatever 
part of the globe he may be,' it has long 
been the custom among Christians to build 
their cathedrals with the choir toward the 
east. The traditional source of civiliza¬ 
tion is in the east. The wise men of the 
Scriptures came from the east. “West¬ 
ward,” not eastward, “the star of empire 
takes its way.” Mathematically consid¬ 
ered, a line drawn east and west is every¬ 
where parallel to the earth’s equator. That 
being the case, each parallel on the earth’s 
surface has its east in a direction of its 
own. The two poles, however, have neither 
east nor west. 

East Africa, German, a possession of 
the German empire, lying on the African 
coast directly south of British East Africa. 
The German rights were acquired from 
the Sultan of Zanzibar in 1890 by a pay¬ 
ment of $1,000,000. Area 384,000 square 
miles. Population, chiefly Bantu, 7,000,- 
000. The protectorate is governed by a 
German governor. There are about 2,000 
German residents, who act as officials, 
commanders, policemen, missionaries, and 
teachers. A few hundred Germans live 
near the coast on plantations of cocoa-palm, 
caoutchouc, vanilla, tobacco, cacao, sugar, 
tea, cotton, cardamon, and cinchona. The 


German government has established a 
number of experimental stations. In the 
year 1905 there were over half a million 
head of cattle and nearly 4,000,000 head 
of sheep and goats in the protectorate. 
Though not developed, it is known that 
there is a vast wealth of gold, lead, cop¬ 
per, coal, and salt. There are precious 
stones. Agates, topazes, moonstones, quartz 
crystals, and garnets are known to exist 
in large quantities. The German govern¬ 
ment spends about $1,000,000 a year on 
the protectorate, in addition to twice as 
much obtained from local revenue. The 
chief exports are rubber, copra, ivory, cof¬ 
fee, sisal, and wax, in all about $3,000,- 
000 a year. See Africa. 

East African Protectorate, or Brit¬ 
ish East Africa, a large area controlled 
by the British Empire on the east coast 
of Africa. The coast extends from the 
Umba to the Juba river, inland as far as 
Uganda. The total area comprises about 
200,000 square miles. The population ex¬ 
ceeds 4,000,000, 2,000 being Europeans. 
The Arabs predominate on the coast. The 
inland tribes belong to the groups of Afri¬ 
cans known as the Bantus, the Somalis, 
and the Gallas. The largest town is Mom¬ 
basa, having a population of about 30,000. 
The Uganda Railway starts here. The 
protectorate is governed by a civil govern¬ 
or and a commander-in-chief, the latter 
in charge of a military force. The head¬ 
quarters of the government are Nairobi, 
a central station on the Uganda Railway. 
There are several hundred European farm¬ 
ers in the neighborhood. Missions have 
been established at various railway sta¬ 
tions. Slavery has been abolished. The 
British government expends about $3,450,- 
000 a year on the protectorate, and re¬ 
ceives a direct return of about two-thirds 
of that amount. The lowlands produce 
rice, Indian corn, cotton, and tobacco. On 
the higher plateaus, coffee, wheat, and bar¬ 
ley are cultivated on a small scale. The 
chief European industry of the protec¬ 
torate is the raising of cattle. The chief 
forest products are rubber, gum-copal, 
ebony, timber, and various fibers. The 
chief exports of Mombasa are ivory, $300,- 
000; copra, grain, rubber, cotton, hides, 


EAST INDIA COMPANY—EASTER 


and wax. The principal imports are cot¬ 
ton goods, rice, flour, tools, wines, spirits, 
groceries, and tobacco. The station post- 
offices handle over 2,000,000 letters a year. 
There are some 2,500 miles of telegraph 
wires. Regular lines of ocean steamers 
ply between Mombasa and Bombay. See 
Uganda; Africa. 

East India Company, a name given to 
various companies chartered by their re¬ 
spective governments to acquire territory 
and carry on mercantile operations in the 
East Indies. Most of these companies 
date from about the time of the discovery 
of America, or more particularly the dis¬ 
covery in 1498 of the route to India 
around the Cape of Good Hope. Among 
the more noted companies were the Por¬ 
tuguese, operating from 1587 to 1640; 
the Dutch, from 1595 to 1795 ; the Dan¬ 
ish, from 1618 to 1845 ; and the French, 
from 1664 to 1769. 

As ordinarily considered, the East 
India company may be taken to refer to 
an English company chartered by Queen 
Elizabeth in 1600. It consisted of 125 
stockholders. Its legal name was The 
Governor and Company of Merchants of 
London Trading with the East Indies. 
The operations of this company were ex¬ 
tensive and resulted in great financial gain 
to the merchants of London. Various 
acts of Parliament permitted the company 
to assume almost imperial power in the 
East. Immense territory was acquired. 
Large armies, both of native and British 
troops, were kept under pay. Extensive 
warehouses and wharves were constructed, 
and a merchant fleet, far surpassing in 
number the Spanish Armada, was main¬ 
tained. As the business of the company 
grew, and the amount of territory in¬ 
creased, the British government found it 
necessary from time to time to assume con¬ 
trol of the company’s affairs. Finally it was 
dissolved, its affairs were wound up, and 
the commerce of the East Indies thrown 
open, not only to all British vessels, but to 
the merchants of all nations. Historically, 
the company is of great importance, be¬ 
cause its projects led to the acquisition of 
India by the British government, and did 
more, perhaps, than any other known arti¬ 


ficial factor to determine the career of 
England as the leading commercial nation. 

See India; Hastings. 

East St. Louis, a city in St. Clair 
County, Illinois, opposite St. Louis, Mis¬ 
souri. The Eads bridge across the Missis¬ 
sippi connects the two cities. East St. 
Louis is a great railroad and manufactur¬ 
ing center, besides containing good schools, 
a large public library, and handsome 
churches. As in St. Louis, there are sepa¬ 
rate schools for colored pupils. It has 
large foundries, car and machine shops, 
glass factories, rolling mills, sugar mills, 
packing houses, breweries, coal and steel 
plants, extensive stock-yards, and a great 
horse and mule market. The population in 
1910 was 58,547. See Eads; St. Louis. 

Easter, es'ter, a festival celebrating 
the resurrection of Jesus Christ. By gen¬ 
eral agreement Easter Day fell on a Sun¬ 
day ; but for centuries, owing to changes 
in the calendars and other causes, there 
was confusion as to which Sunday should 
be thus observed. The rule adopted by 
the Roman Catholic church and by the 
Church of England is that Easter Day 
is the first Sunday following the Pascal 
full moon. This full moon is the one that 
occurs on or after March 21st. If the 
full moon occurs on Sunday, March 21st, 
Easter is the Sunday following, or March 
28th. Even this ruling gives a wide range 
for the date of Easter. In case the full 
moon should occur on Saturday, March 
21st, the following day, March 22d, would 
be Easter Sunday, the earliest date pos¬ 
sible. In case a full moon should fall on 
Monday, March 20th, the Pascal, which 
is the first full moon after the 21st, would 
not occur until four weeks later, on April 
17th, bringing Easter Sunday on April 
23d. This is the latest date possible. In 
1905 Easter fell on this date. Easter 
closes the forty days of Lent. Its solemni¬ 
ties are supposed to usher in gaiety in 
fashionable circles. The flower of the sea¬ 
son is the beautiful white Easter lily. 
Florists have developed great skill in 
bringing this flower into full bloom at 
the right time. The habit of presenting 
Easter eggs to one’s friends is a custom 
thought to have been derived from the 


EASTERN STAR—ECHO 


Persian magi, the egg being the symbol 
of creation, birth, or resurrection,—pos¬ 
sibly the re-creation of spring. Dyeing the 
eggs is a Christian addition; red, in par¬ 
ticular, symbolizing the blood of the re¬ 
demption. 

Eastern Star, an auxiliary order or 
secret society to which Free Masons and 
the wives, mothers, sisters, daughters, and 
widows of Masons are eligible. The first 
chapter was organized in New York in 
1868. There are now twenty-eight grand 
chapters in as many states and over 100,- 
000 members. The emblem of the order 
is a five-point star. See Masons. 

Ebers, Georg Moritz (1837-1898), 
an eminent German scholar and novelist. 
He was a remarkable student when a 
jmung man. In early life he began to 
apply himself to the study of ancient re¬ 
mains in Egypt. In 1868 he was ap¬ 
pointed professor of Egyptian language, 
history, and antiquities at Jena. Two 
years later he became professor of Egyp¬ 
tology in the University of Leipsic. He 
visited Egypt repeatedly and was instru¬ 
mental in making excavations revealing 
numerous specimens of Egyptian art, and 
in the discovery of valuable papyrus manu¬ 
scripts. His university duties were but 
nominal. He wrote a large number of 
works relative to Egypt, in which he dis¬ 
cussed the manuscripts, statuary, archi¬ 
tecture, and hieroglyphic inscriptions. 
Among his writings is a popular work 
called Egypt in Picture and Word. He 
also wrote a series of novels descriptive 
of ancient Egyptian and Syrian life. The 
more noted are An Egyptian Princess, 
IJarda, Homo Sum, The Sisters, Sera pis, 
and Kleopatra. At the time of his death, 
he was, as might be expected naturally, 
the leading authority on all matters per¬ 
taining to ancient Egypt. 

Ebony, a name given to various woods. 
They may be described as heavy, dark, 
hard woods suitable for carving, ornamen¬ 
tal cabinet work, canes, and musical in¬ 
struments. The ebony family, which, it 
may be noted, does not contain all the 
woods known in commerce as ebony, com¬ 
prises several genera and about 250 species 
of shrubs or trees. The most valuable of 


the ebony trees belong to the genus Dio- 
spyros, and are confined to the warmer 
regions of the world, particularly to Asia, 
Mauritius and Africa. One species of 
this genus is the Virginian, or common 
persimmon. The most noted ebony, that 
having the blackest and finest grain, is 
obtained from the forests of Mauritius and 
Ceylon. Logs two feet in diameter are 
not unusual. A Japanese persimmon, cul¬ 
tivated for its fruit, also yields wood much 
prized by the Japanese artists for carving. 
A Jamaican tree, belonging to the legume 
family, furnishes a green “ebony,” which 
takes a beautiful polish and is much used 
for inlaying. A dark brown “ebony,” hav¬ 
ing the qualities of genuine ebony in all 
but color, is obtained from the forests of 
British Guiana. Genuine ebony takes a 
polish like ivory, and is almost as hard. 
See Persimmon. 

Echidna, e-kid'na, a family of quadru¬ 
peds found in Australia and New Guinea. 
The echidna is related to the famous Aus¬ 
tralian duckbill and, like it, resembles sev¬ 
eral different animals. Its nose terminates 
in a narrow, horny beak. Its back and 
sides to its very toes are set thickly with 
strong spines. There are two species, one 
with three toes, one with five. Both are 
strong diggers and are able to conceal 
themselves in loose earth in an incredibly 
short time. Like the duckbill, the echidna 
lays eggs in a burrow, and keeps them 
warm, bird fashion, until its young are 
hatched. It is about the size of a hedge¬ 
hog, much smaller than a porcupine. It 
lives chiefly on insects, which it catches 
with a long, sticky tongue. See Duckbill. 

Echo, ek'o, in Greek mythology, a 
beautiful nymph of the woodland hills. 
She was an attendant upon Artemis, the 
huntress. Her chief failing was a habit 
of talking too much and of insisting on 
having the last word. One day Hera was 
seeking her wayward husband, Zeus, whom 
she had reason to believe was disporting 
himself among the nymphs. Echo managed 
to detain Hera in conversation until Zeus 
made his escape. In her anger Hera de¬ 
prived Echo of all power of speech save 
reply, that is, she left her only the last 
word. Echo fell in love with a beauti- 


ECHO—ECLIPSE 


ful youth named Narcissus. She followed 
him in the chase, waiting for him to speak 
that she might reply. At length the op¬ 
portunity came, but Narcissus did not re¬ 
turn her love. In her grief she faded 
and pined away until nothing was left 
but her voice, which may still be heard 
wandering in the mountains, speaking only 
when spoken to, and replying only in the 
exact words of the speaker. 

Echo, a sound returned to its source. 
If a person speaks against a wall or cliff 
the wave of sound is sent back again, and 
the speaker hears the sound of his own 
voice as though someone in the distance 
were calling to him. Under ordinary con¬ 
ditions sound travels at a rate of 1,080 
feet per second. The time elapsing be¬ 
tween the call and the return of an echo 
gives a clue to the distance of the re¬ 
flecting surface. The reflecting surface 
must be a concave or, if flat, it must 
stand squarely across the path of the 
sound, or else the sound -wave will glance 
off in another direction and fail to return 
to the speaker. Many caves and mountain 
passes have celebrated echoes. Some pub¬ 
lic halls echo to such an extent that it is 
difficult to address an audience. In such 
cases cloth hangings are a help. 

Eclipse, e-klips', a term applied to the 
cutting off of the light of the sun from 
a heavenly body. An eclipse of the moon 
is caused by the passing of the earth be¬ 
tween the sun and the moon. The moon 
is in the earth’s shadow. An eclipse of 
the sun is caused by the passing of the 
moon between the sun and the earth. The 
earth is in the moon’s shadow. The ob¬ 
server cannot see the sun for the moon. 
Since the earth is smaller than the sun 
its shadow comes to a point 857,000 miles 
away. At the point where the moon passes 
through the shadow its width is about 
two and two-thirds times the diameter of 
the moon. It is possible for a total eclipse 
of the moon to last about two hours. 
Even during a total eclipse the moon is 
not entirely obscured, but shines with a 
dull, copper-colored light. For a similar 
reason the shadow of the moon is also a 
cone, averaging 232,000 miles in length. 
At times the moon is farther than this 


from the earth, and it is not possible for 
an eclipse of the sun to take place. When 
conditions are most favorable, the earth 
enters the moon’s shadow at a point where 
the cone is 168 miles in diameter. A 
total eclipse of the sun is possible, there¬ 
fore, only along a belt of this width. 
As a matter of fact, the region within the 
moon’s shadow is usually an oval figure 
having this length, but having a width 
not to exceed sixty or seventy miles. Dur¬ 
ing a total eclipse the disc of the sun is 
entirely concealed within the limited re¬ 
gion mentioned. 

The track of this oval shadow across 
the continent is called the belt or path of 
the eclipse. The greatest number of eclip¬ 
ses possible in any one year is seven. 
The lowest number possible is two. The 
usual number is four. In 1917 there will 
be four eclipses of the sun and three of the 
moon. In 1935 there will be two of the 
moon and five of the sun. As a total 
eclipse of the sun affects but a small area, 
any particular portion of the earth’s sur¬ 
face is likely to be within its path only 
once in about 360 years. 

The next total solar eclipse visible in 
the United States will occur in 1918. Sub¬ 
sequent dates are 1923, 1925, 1930, 1945, 
1954, 1979, and 1984. Whether partial 
or total, an eclipse is an interesting phe¬ 
nomenon. During a lunar eclipse the 
moon assumes a weird, spectral appear¬ 
ance. During a solar eclipse the black¬ 
ness which comes over both the sun and 
the earth is truly appalling. According 
to a statement of a writer who was an 
eye witness of a solar eclipse visible in 
the Southern States during the early half 
of the nineteenth century, the blackness of 
the landscape was simply beyond descrip¬ 
tion. Cattle roamed the pastures or stood 
in astonishment; chickens went to roost. 
Negroes prostrated themselves in terror 
and cried for mercy, thinking the end of 
the world was at hand. 

Astronomers seize upon a solar eclipse 
as a favorable opportunity to study the 
sun. Scientific expeditions are sent out 
from learned institutions to the favored re¬ 
gion, even to remote parts of the world, 
when a total eclipse is due. The work 


ECLIPTIC—ECOLOGY 


of observing an eclipse is now systema¬ 
tized thoroughly. The most important du¬ 
ty during the hour is that of taking photo¬ 
graphs for future study. 

See Sun ; Moon. 

Ecliptic, the apparent annual path of 
the sun through the heavens. There are 
as many stars in the sky in the daytime 
as at night, only we cannot see them. The 
sun is in company with stars all the time, 
only we cannot see them. By a careful 
study of the heavens we shall see that the 
stars that apparently travel, rise, and set 
with the sun in December were not his 
companions in November and will not be 
his attendants in January, but will be with 
him in December again. The stars in a 
belt running entirely around the heavens 
in a great circle take turns in accompany¬ 
ing the sun; or, put in another way, the 
sun seems to go around this belt once a 
year. As a matter of fact the earth goes 
around the sun, but, by watching the stars, 
it seems to us that the sun is passing 
around the heavens. When one rides in a 
train, a telegraph pole, a distant tree, or 
a hill seems to pass along the landscape, 
when in reality the tree and the landscape 
are at rest, and the observer is moving. 
So in our case, the sun and heavens are at 
rest,—we are moving. The line which 
the sun seems to follow round and round 
each year is called the ecliptic. A belt of 
stars lying along both sides of the ecliptic 
is called the zodiac. See Zodiac; Con¬ 
stellation; Star. 

Eclogue, ek'log, as commonly used, a 
pastoral poem in which shepherds are in¬ 
troduced as conversing with one another. 
The word originally meant “selections,” or 
“elegant extracts.” In this sense it was 
applied often to poems of the same form. 
The satires of Horace, for instance, were 
called eclogues. The bucolics or pastoral 
poems of Virgil were called eclogues, 
probably by grammarians, and not by Vir¬ 
gil himself. Since Virgil’s beautiful poems 
were called eclogues the term has come to 
signify a poem which is not only of a 
pastoral nature, but which is elegant in 
form, highly wrought, and exquisitely fin- 
isnea. The term has been applied to many 
poexns of inferior merit. 


Ecole des Beaux Arts, akol'da bo-zahr, 
a school of fine arts maintained by the 
French government, where all students be¬ 
tween the ages of fifteen and thirty may 
receive instruction free. The school, 
founded in 1648 by Cardinal Mazarin, is 
considered perhaps the best of its kind in 
the world. There are 1,300 students, most 
of them French. Of the foreign students, 
however, the greatest number is sent by the 
United States. Courses are offered in 
painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, 
engraving, modeling, and gem cutting. The 
school offers a celebrated scholarship, the 
prix de Rome, founded in 1666. The win¬ 
ners of it receive an allowance from the 
state for three or four years, at least two 
of which must be spent in the study of 
antique art at Rome. The prize may be 
competed for by any French artist between 
the ages of fifteen and twenty-five, whether 
or not he be a student at the school. See 
Mazarin. 

Ecology, e-kol'6-jy, a name given, in 
botany, to that division of the subject deal¬ 
ing with plants in relation to their sur¬ 
roundings. There are two distinct aspects 
of the subject. The first deals with the 
individual plant and the changes it under¬ 
goes in adapting itself to its environment. 
For example, a plant visited often by a 
certain kind of insect may change the 
shape of the blossom so that in time, it will 
better accommodate that insect. A tropical 
plant, the “Monstera,” which receives an 
oversupply of rain has developed wide, 
umbrella-like leaves with openings several 
inches long and an inch or more wide to 
let the water through. A plant removed 
from comparatively moist to dry soil will 
develop long tap roots which go in search of 
water. Any change in environment will 
result eventually in the modification of 
some part or parts of the plant. The sec¬ 
ond phase of the study treats of plants 
as gathered in groups, called plant-so¬ 
cieties. Plants do not grow at random, but 
group themselves into definite communities, 
such as swamp-societies, desert-societies, 
meadow-societies, etc. This peculiar group¬ 
ing is due to combinations of various lac- 
tors, among them water, soil, light, wind, 
and temperature. See Botany. 


ECONOMICS—ECUADOR 


Economics, or Political Economy, 

according to one definition, the science of 
wealth. It deals with the wealth-getting 
and the wealth-using activities of man. As 
used today by the majority of English stu¬ 
dents of the subject, the term economics 
includes a study of the laws governing the 
production, distribution, and consumption 
of wealth, and of how to apply these laws 
to everyday life so as to better existing con¬ 
ditions. It is not, of course, an exact science, 
for men cannot be depended upon always 
to do the same thing under the same condi¬ 
tions ; yet it has been observed that when 
men are taken collectively, and their ac¬ 
tions under given conditions are studied, 
from the results of this study certain gen¬ 
eral law$ can be formulated which are true 
of the majority. For example, such study 
has enabled economists, or students of econ¬ 
omy, to discover the principle that luxury, 
the excessive consumption of goods or arti¬ 
cles which satisfy human wants, is waste¬ 
ful, and that no man should claim a fuller 
satisfaction of his wants than is accorded to 
the rest. 

Production treats of the supply of labor, 
of raw material, and of capital in their re¬ 
lations to each other. Distribution deals, 
not with the location of goods but with 
their division among the factors which pro¬ 
duced them. For instance it would include 
a study of the question as to how much of 
the price brought by a pair of shoes should 
go to the manager of the factory, and how 
much to the workman who actually made 
the shoes. Consumption, or the using of 
goods, would involve such a question as 
whether an individual has the right to 
spend more than he needs for the satisfac¬ 
tion of his real wants, both physical and 
intellectual. A fourth department of eco¬ 
nomics is exchange, which treats of money, 
price, value, currency, and the like. Under 
this head would be asked such questions 
as: Is paper money safe? Is the silver 
standard practical? 

The study of economics in its relation to 
everyday life is a fascinating one. It in¬ 
volves the question of labor unions, and 
how far they have a right to carry their 
demands, of public ownership of railroads 
and other public service corporations, of 


the organization of the banking system—in 
fact, it touches very many of the leading 
questions of the day. 

Ecuador, ek-wa-dor', a republic of 
South America. The name - is Spanish, 
meaning the equator, under which Ecua¬ 
dor is situated. It lies on the Pacific 
coast between Colombia and Peru. The 
boundaries are in dispute. The present 
territory administered by the government 
of Ecuador comprises about 120.000 
square miles. When Pizarro and his men 
invaded South America, the Indians of 
Ecuador and Peru were at war, thus fa¬ 
cilitating the conquest of their country. 
Ecuador obtained its independence of Co¬ 
lombia in 1830. Like that of other South 
American republics, the present govern¬ 
ment is organized on the model of the 
United States. Free public schools have 
been organized; a university, thirty-seven 
colleges corresponding to high schools, and 
several hundred primary schools are main¬ 
tained at public expense. The public 
schools are seldom held in schoolhouses. 
They are without proper school furniture. 
Quito, the capital, is situated at an eleva¬ 
tion of 9,600 feet above the sea. It is 
the highest capital city in the world. For 
fear of earthquakes there is not a stove, 
stovepipe, or chimney in town. The cook¬ 
ing is done in pots and kettles over a 
charcoal fire. Guayaquil, on the gulf of 
that name, has an excellent harbor, and 
is the commercial city of the republic. A 
railway from the harbor to Quito is under 
construction. The engineering difficulties 
are great, for the surface is exceedingly 
mountainous. This railroad will pass near 
the famous Mt. Chimborazo, and Mt. Coto¬ 
paxi, the loftiest volcano known. 

The chief industries of the country are 
mining, stock raising, dairying, lumbering, 
and the production of cacao, coffee, sugar¬ 
cane, tobacco, grain, and grapes. There 
are also manufactures of pottery and hats. 
The women of Quito are famous for mak¬ 
ing exquisite laces. The leading exports 
are cacao or cocoa, coffee, hides, meats, 
and the Peruvian bark from which quinine 
is extracted. Vanilla, sarsaparilla, cotton, 
rubber, pearls, vegetable ivory, and straw 
hats are also exported. 


EDDA 


The population is given in the States¬ 
man’s Year Book as 1,500,000. Spanish 
is the prevailing language. The inhabi¬ 
tants are chiefly of the Catholic faith. 

Statistics. The following statistics 
are the latest from trustworthy sources: 


Land area, square miles . 116,000 

Population, chiefly Indians. 1,400*000 

Quito . 70,000 

Guayaquil . 80,000 

Cuenca . 30,000 

Riobamba . 18,000 

Number of provinces . 17 

Members of senate . 32 

Representatives, about . 70 

Salary of president . $6,000 

Annual expenditure . $7,500,000 

Soldiers . 5,000 

Bonded indebtedness . $5,000,000 

Production of quinine, pounds . 360,000 

Ivory nuts, pounds . 46,000,000 

Coffee, pounds . 5,700,000 

Rubber, pounds . 1,000,000 

Rice, pounds . 40,000,000 

Sugar, pounds . 16,000,000 

Cocoa (1908), pounds . 70,000,000 

Total exports .$11,000,000 

Navigable rivers, miles . 600 

Railways, miles . 325 

Telegraph, miles . 2,500 

Panama hats (1907) $1,200,000 

Gold output . $125,000 

Public schools . 1,100 

Pupils enrolled . 69,000 


Edda, an Icelandic collection of writ¬ 
ings which contains the mythological tra¬ 
ditions and the early songs of the Scan¬ 
dinavian nations. There are two so-called 
eddas. The word edda, its early signifi¬ 
cance, and its present use, have been the 
occasion of much discussion among schol¬ 
ars. The word is not found in any of 
the dialects of the northern languages. 
It appears first in an old song belong¬ 
ing to the collection known as the Elder 
Edda. In this song the word is used as 
a title for great-grandmother, which has 
suggested the idea that the name was given 
to these records because the stories were 
told and retold by grandmothers. If this 
theory be true, the title Edda is in mean¬ 
ing akin to that of Mother Goose. An¬ 
other and quite different idea is that these 
old songs and tales were looked upon as 
the source or mother of more modern 
poetry. The word edda is found in the 
inscription on one of the manuscripts of 

the Younger Edda, but why it was so 

IL-£1 


called is not very clear. Gudbrand Vig- 
fusson, a Danish authority of high rank, 
states that from 1340 to 1640 the word 
edda is used by poets as a synonym for 
the technical laws of poetic composition. 
This would imply that the Younger 
Edda was so called from that portion of 
the manuscript which sets forth these laws 
of prosody. 

The Younger Edda, and the only one 
known up to 1642, is also called the Prose 
Edda and the Snorra Edda, or Edda Snor- 
ra. It is believed by scholars to have 
been composed, in part at least, between 
the years 1140 and 1160, more than a 
hundred years after the introduction of 
Christianity into Iceland. Snorri Sturlu¬ 
son, a learned Icelander, who lived in 
1178-1241, and from whom the Edda 
takes the name of Snorra Edda, arranged, 
modified, and added to the work of the 
earlier authors. Several manuscript copies 
of the Snorra Edda are in existence, the 
oldest of which dates from the early part 
of the fourteenth century. This Edda 
was first printed in 1665. It has been 
translated into French, German, and Eng¬ 
lish. It is written largely in prose and 
consists of five parts, as follows: 

1. A preface which shows plainly the 
influence of Christianity giving as it does 
a history of the world from the time of 
Adam and Eve down to the kings of Nor¬ 
way and Sweden. 

2. The fooling of Gylfe. Gylfe is a 
king of Sweden and this part of the Edda 
consists of stories of Norse mythology. 
It is the most valuable record of the myth¬ 
ological system of the Scandinavians. 

3. Brage’s Talke or Sayings of Brage. 
These are also legends of the gods. Brage 
or Bragi was the god of poetry. 

4. This is the longest of the five parts 
of the Edda. It is a treatise on the art 
of poetry, commonly called Skalda. It 
claims to consist of instructions given by 
Bragi. It ‘contains, interspersed through¬ 
out the rules, and illustrative of them, two 
hundred forty poetic quotations and ten 
longer poems, among which are found 
many of the best examples of northern 
poetry. In many ways this is the most im¬ 
portant part of this Edda. 






























I 


/ 


EDDY, MARY BAKER 


5. A commentary on three of Snorri’s 
poems, written in honor of Hakon, King 
of Norway. 

The Elder Ed da , known also as Sam¬ 
und’s Edda and the Poetic Edda, was 
wholly unknown until 1642. At this time 
an Icelandic bishop, Brynhulf Sveinsson, 
discovered an old vellum manuscript con¬ 
taining a collection of songs about Norse 
gods and heroes. He called it, somewhat 
unfortunately, Samund’s Edda, believing 
that the songs had been collected by 
Samund the Wise, a Christian priest of 
the eleventh century. The discovery of 
this manuscript awakened great interest in 
Scandinavian literature. It led to the 
printing of the Younger Edda and to re¬ 
searches which brought to light a large 
number of songs and sagas of great value 
in the study of the northern nations. Later 
authorities are convinced that Samund had 
nothing to do with the collection, that 
the songs were put into writing from oral 
tradition as late as the thirteenth century, 
and that the oldest of the songs could not 
have been composed earlier than the ninth 
century. The subject matter of myth and 
legend, however, may be much older. One 
thing is certain. These songs were col¬ 
lected in Iceland and by an Icelander. 
In order to understand something of the 
sources of this collection, it must be re¬ 
membered that Iceland was peopled, prob¬ 
ably in the ninth century, by Norwegians 
who fled from the oppression caused by 
the introduction into their country of 
feudalism. They brought with them their 
skalds or bards. They brought also their 
religious beliefs, their legends and tradi¬ 
tions, perhaps songs and hymns which they 
had loved in the old home. For a cen¬ 
tury they retained their pagan beliefs. 
Then the island was converted to Chris¬ 
tianity. Two or three centuries later 
someone foresaw the value of these old 
songs which had grown up and been pre¬ 
served by oral transmission, of else had a 
passion for what was old, and collected 
them in writing. Meanwhile the religion 
of Odin had disappeared from the main¬ 
land also, and with it had gone the songs 
and stories which would have been lost 
but for their preservation in Iceland. 


The Elder Edda consists of thirty-eight 
songs and is divided into two parts. 1 he 
first part contains all the poems relating 
to the creation of the world, the origin of 
man, and the happiness or misery of the 
future life. It also contains those poems 
which recount stories of the gods. The 
first poem is the most remarkable and 
probably the most ancient. It is called the 
Voluspa, which means the Prophecy of the 
Volva or Sibyl. “She sings of the world- 
before the gods were made, of the com¬ 
ing and of the meeting of the Aesir, of the 
origin of the giants, dwarfs, and men, of 
the happy beginning of all things, and the 
sad ending that shall be in the chaos of 
Ragnarok.” 

The second part of the Elder Edda 
contains a long series of poems relating to 
the two heroic families of the Vdlsungs 
and the Niblungs. These stories are uni¬ 
versal among Teutonic peoples. They 
form the foundation of the Niebelungen 
Lied of the Germans. No translation can 
give an adequate idea of the early Norse 
songs. A few selections, however, may 
be of interest. They are from the transla¬ 
tion of R. B. Anderson. Longfellow has 
written a poem, The Challenge of Thor, 
after the manner of these Icelandic songs, 
commencing: 

I am the God Thor, 

I am the War God, 

I am the Thunderer! 

Here in my Northland, 

My fastness and fortress, 

Reign I forever ! 

The golden age of the gods, when 
On the green they played 
In joyful mood, 

Nor knew at all 
The want of good. . . . 

Of Ymir’s flesh 
Was earth created. 

Of his blood the sea, 

Of his bones the hills, 

Of his hair trees and plants, 

Of his skull the heavens, 

And of his brows 
The gentle powers 

Formed Midgard for the sons of men; 

But of his brain 
The heavy clouds are 

All created. —Eddas (Anderson). 

Eddy, Mrs. Mary Baker (1821-1910), 
the founder of the Christian Science de¬ 
nomination. She was born at Bow, New 


EDDY, MARY BAKER 


Hampshire, the youngest of six children. 
Her parents were intelligent, conscientious 
people, the mother a capable woman of 
placid temper and marked spirituality, the 
father known for his strict integrity and 
iron will. As a child Mary was considered 
a prodigy in the neighborhood, partly on 
account of the studies she pursued with her 
brother Albert, ten years her senior, and 
partly because of her deep interest in re¬ 
ligious questions, and the courage and abil¬ 
ity she displayed in upholding her own 
views. After studying at Sanbornton 
Academy, Mary was for some time under 
the tuition of Prof. Dyer H. Sanborn. 
This and the instruction of her brother Al¬ 
bert completes the story of her school days, 
but she never ceased to be a student. Mrs. 
Eddy’s first husband was Col. George 
W. Glover, who took her to a home in the 
South where in a short time he died. She 
returned, a widow, to her father’s house to 
meet with other trials. Her mother was 
in failing health and soon died, her father 
marrying again shortly after. Her own 
health, which had never been robust, was 
now much impaired, so that she was en¬ 
tirely dependent upon her friends. When 
they insisted on separating her little boy 
from her on the ground that his childish 
vigor and boisterous ways were too much_ 
for her delicate nerves, she was obliged 
to consent. In part through the influence 
of her sister she at length married an 
itinerant dentist, Dr. Daniel Patterson, a 
relative of the second Mrs. Baker. When 
about forty years of age, Mrs. Eddy, at 
that time Mrs. Patterson, became interested 
in the mental healing of disease. She had 
become a confirmed invalid, but even when 
confined to her bed she read, wrote, studied 
and spent long hours in thought. She had 
become convinced that the healing princi¬ 
ple exercised by Jesus Christ still existed 
and might be made effectual if only it were 
understood. She had heard of cures 
wrought by Phineas P. Quimby, a magnetic 
healer of Portland, M&ine, and came to the 
conclusion that he understood the law for 
which she was seeking. She went, there¬ 
fore, to Dr. Quimby and through his treat¬ 
ments her health was restored, although 
her explanation of the cure—that it was 


hi 


the healer’s knowledge and understanding 
of God’s law—was not accepted by the 
healer himself. Mrs. Patterson continued 
her study of the Bible but did not feel that 
she had found the truth she sought until 
1866. She was at this time living in Lynn, 
Massachusetts, and met with a fall which 
resulted in what the physician who was 
summoned diagnosed as a serious injury, 
giving her friends to understand that her 
death was to be expected. Mrs. Patterson, 
as one of her disciples states it “reached 
such a realization of the present healing 
potency of the Master’s word that she was 
immediately made whole.” Mrs. Patterson 
began shortly to teach her “discovery,” as 
she called it, to pupils, giving it the name 
of Christian Science.- In 1875 she pub¬ 
lished Science and Health with Key to the 
Scriptures, which has passed through many 
revisions and editions, and is still the text 
book of the denomination. 

Mrs. Patterson married Dr. Asa G. Eddy 
in 1877, having some years before secured 
a divorce from Dr. Patterson who had 
shamefully deserted her. From the time 
of her discovery in 1866 Mrs. Eddy’s en¬ 
tire life was devoted to the study and de¬ 
velopment of Christian Science. She met 
with much opposition and for a long time 
found few followers. She had to contend 
with cherished opinions concerning religion 
and medicine, two subjects which lie very 
close to the heart of the average individual. 
Mrs. Eddy was engaged in teaching, lectur¬ 
ing, writing, and in directing the “Mother 
Church,” established in 1879, until she 
reached the age of seventy. At this time 
she retired from active work in the church 
with the title of “Pastor Emeritus.” For 
nearly twenty years she lived quietly at 
home, continuing with tireless energy to 
organize and direct the movement she had 
inaugurated. Mrs. Eddy has written much, 
has established periodicals, The Christian 
Science Sentinel, The Christian Science 
Journal, and the Christian Science Moni¬ 
tor, and has planned and put in operation 
the educational system of the denomination. 
Among her books may be mentioned, Retro¬ 
spection and Introspection, Unity of Good, 
No and Yes, Miscellaneous Writings, and 
Christian Science versus Pantheism . Con- 


EDDYSTONE—EDFU 


flicting stories have been told concerning 
this woman’s life, character and motives. 
That she was a remarkable woman none 
will deny, that she was honest, unselfish, 
and untiring in her devotion to a movement 
whose aim was purely beneficent is believed 
by those who knew her best, and that thou¬ 
sands think of her with warmest love and 
thanksgiving may be readily proven by any¬ 
one who cares to investigate. See Chris¬ 
tian Science; Science and Health. 

It will be difficult to the layman in either the 
religious or medical worlds to properly estimate 
at its true value the life and career of Mary 
Baker Eddy. This much, however, the un¬ 
prejudiced must admit: She was a woman with 
a mentality strong enough to hold her own 
against as bitter a tide of hostile criticism as 
ever threatened to overwhelm any leader of a 
new thought. In spite of this hostility Mrs. 
Eddy established, here in the United States, a 
cult which is today an important factor in the 
religious and social life of the nation. The 
Christian Science church is a recognized moral, 
religious, and medical force. 

A woman who could in the short span of a 
generation—she did not found the church of 
which she was the leader until 1879—build so 
great an edifice upon so firm a foundation was 
more than an ordinary woman. She was a 
great woman. How great, the future alone can 
determine, for true greatness of a leader of a 
new thought can only be measured through the 
perspective of years. San Francisco Examiner. 

Eddystone, ed'di-st5n, a name given 
to three ridges of submerged rock off the 
coast of Cornwall, England. They are 
exceedingly dangerous to navigation, and 
have been the cause of shipwrecks innu¬ 
merable. Many a gallant ship, returning 
home to England after a long and peril¬ 
ous voyage, has been dashed to pieces al¬ 
most within sight of home. In 1700 Hen¬ 
ry Winstanley, a public-spirited man, 
erected there a wooden lighthouse 100 
feet high, with a stone base. Three years 
later builder and lighthouse were washed 
away. In 1709 a rich silk merchant erec¬ 
ted a second lighthouse on much the same 
plan. It was burned down in 1755. In 
1759 a third tower was completed, this 
time at the expense of the government. 
It had a diameter of twenty-seven feet at 
the base and fifteen feet at the top. It 
was seventy-two feet high. It was built 
of granite blocks weighing from one to 


two tons each. They were ingeniously 
dovetailed together. This lighthouse was 
undermined by the sea, and was replaced 
by a new tower in 1882. It has a total 
height of 133 feet. Its light, having a 
total strength of 160,000 candle power, is 
visible on a clear night for a distance of 
nearly eighteen miles. 

Edelweis, a/del-vis, a species of flower¬ 
ing plant closely related to the everlasting. 
The name is German, signifying “noble 
white.” Its real flowers are yellow and 
inconspicuous, inclosed by woolly leaves 
of a pure white. The edelweis is the 
emblem of purity. It is found in the 
snowy ranges of Switzerland, and is so 
much sought by Alpine tourists that it is 
in danger of extermination by persons who 
bring it to the hotels for sale. Efforts, 
not without success, have been made to 
raise edelweis in America as a plant for 
rockeries. 

Eden, in the Hebrew Scriptures, the 
first home of mankind. We are told in 
Genesis that “God planted a garden east¬ 
ward in Eden,” and that he placed man 
in the garden to care for it. The descrip¬ 
tion of Eden and of its situation, however, 
is obscure. All attempts to identify it 
from this description with any existing 
locality have proved failures. This fact 
has been variously explained. Luther 
taught that Eden was protected from dis¬ 
covery by angels until the time of the 
deluge, when all traces of it were de¬ 
stroyed. Others explain the narrative as 
an allegory, claiming that Eden represents 
a state of innocence. The Hebrew word 
Eden means pleasure or delight, and is of 
frequent occurrence in literature to desig¬ 
nate figuratively some especially delight¬ 
ful region. In King Richard II, Shakes¬ 
peare speaks of England as “this other 
Eden.” 

They hand in hand, with wandering steps and 
slow, 

Through Eden took their solitary way. 

—Milton, Paradise Lost. 

Summer isles of Eden lying in dark-purple 
spheres of sea. 

—Tennyson, Locksley Hall. 

Edfu, a town in upper Egypt. It is 
situated on the left bank of the Nile on 


EDGEWORTH—EDINBURGH 


the twenty-fifth parallel of north latitude. 
The town is noted for a celebrated Egyp¬ 
tian temple, “the most perfect existing ex¬ 
ample of an ancient Egyptian religious 
edifice.” In plan, architecture, and sculp¬ 
ture, it is an imitation of the work done 
by the Pharoahs, but it was founded by 
one of the Ptolemies, 222 B. C. The en¬ 
trance is a massive double gate or pylon, 
250 feet wide and 115 feet high. A large 
court with a peristyle of columns lies with¬ 
in. Beyond this is a hall, and beyond this 
a second hall, and beyond the second hall 
is a sanctuary—a mystery of mysteries. 
The total length of the temple is 450 feet. 

Edgeworth, Maria (1767-1849), an 
English novelist. She was born at Hare 
Hatch, Berkshire. When she was twelve 
years old her father succeeded to the fam¬ 
ily estate of Edgeworthtown, Ireland, and 
removed his family thither. He educated 
his daughter himself. Practical Education 
and an Essay on Irish Bulls were joint 
productions of father and daughter. In 
1800 Miss Edgeworth published Castle 
Rackrent, a novel of Irish life, which at 
once gave her a national reputation. 
Moral Talcs, Popular Tales, and Tales of 
Fashionable Life followed. These are col¬ 
lections of short stories, and are probably 
her best work. Miss Edgeworth’s novels 
include Leonora, Patronage, LIdrrington, 
Ormond, Belinda, and Helen, a Tale. Be¬ 
sides these she wrote a number of chil¬ 
dren’s books: Early Lessons, Rosamond, 
The Parents' Assistant, Frank, Harry and 
Lucy. Miss Edgeworth’s influence on lit¬ 
erature was deep and lasting. Her style 
is easy and natural. She displays a keen 
sense of humor and excels in character 
drawing. 

Three of her aims were to paint national man¬ 
ners, to enforce morality, and to teach fashion¬ 
able society by satirizing the lives of the idle and 
worldly. ... As a painter of national life and 
manners, and an illustrator of the homelier graces 
of human character, Miss Edgeworth is surpassed 
by Sir Walter Scott alone; while as a direct 
moral teacher, she has no peer among novelists. 
Among the many sweet memories her unsullied 
pages have bequeathed to the world, not the least 
precious is her own noble character, which ever 
responded to all that is best and most enduring 
in human nature.—Thomas Gilray. 

Edict of Nantes. See Huguenots. 


Edinburgh, ed'in-bur-ro', the capital 
city of Scotland. It is situated near the 
eastern shore, about two miles from the 
Firth of Forth. Leith is its principal port. 
The site is hilly. Seen from the sea, the 
city presents an imposing appearance, gain¬ 
ing for it the title of the Athens of the 
North. Like the chief city of the Athe¬ 
nians, Edinburgh grew up under the shelter 
of an acropolis. The scenic feature of the 
city is a sloping ridge of rock, shaped like 
a lady’s leg-o’-mutton sleeve. The shoulder 
rises toward the west into a precipitous 
crag, and is accessible only from the east 
by way of the wrist and arm. Crowning 
the height sits the ancient citadel known 
to every Scot as the Castle. 

Viewed from the castle height, a valley 
three hundred feet below runs east and 
west quite through the center of the town. 
It is admirably laid off in parks, gardens, 
and shrubbery, half concealing the rail¬ 
roads that in this way gain access to the 
heart of the city without destroying its 
beauty or rendering too painful the con¬ 
trast between the ivy-clad historical past 
and the sooty, cinder-covered present. 
North of these gardens rises the New City, 
tier after tier, a splendid assembly of 
streets, palatial hotels, places of business, 
and elegant homes—all very attractive and 
well enough for the permanent resident; 
but the mind of the traveler returns to the 
castle. 

Edinburgh was founded by the North¬ 
umbrian King Edwin, and was a favorite 
stronghold of the Stuarts. Sometimes it 
was a residence and sometimes it was the 
prison of a Scottish king. Although royal¬ 
ty left Edinburgh in 1603, when James 
VI of Scotland became James I of Eng¬ 
land, and though the Scottish Parliament 
was merged with the English Parliament a 
century later, the old rock is still regarded 
affectionately as the guardian of the liber¬ 
ties of Scotland. Although the wall that 
surrounds its summit would soon crumble 
beneath the fire of modern artillery, the 
castle has withstood many a siege, and, if 
guarded by a watchful garrison, was once 
considered impregnable. A garrison is 
still maintained. A huge cannon called 
Mons Meg, made at Mons in Belgium 


EDINBURGH 


1476, still guards the ramparts. It is con¬ 
structed of iron bars carefully fitted to¬ 
gether and bound with hoops. Its bore is 
twenty inches in diameter. A boy can 
swing himself into it with ease. Two of 
the old castle rooms are of especial inter- 
est,—Queen Mary’s Room, where her son 
James, already mentioned, was born, and 
the Crown Room, where the regalia of the 
Stuarts, the ancient crown, sceptre, sword 
of state, and lord treasurer’s rod were kept. 

Save in Athens and Rome, it would be 
difficult to find a half hour’s walk of 
greater interest than that down the long 
descent of High Street, leading from the 
Castle to Holyrood Palace at its eastern 
foot a mile away. This street was con¬ 
sidered once the finest in Europe, though 
much of its glory has departed. The en¬ 
tire thoroughfare is known as High Street, 
but different parts as Castle Hill, Lawn 
market, where linen was sold, Netherbow, 
and Cannongate are known by special 
names. A branch called Westbow leads off 
to Grassmarket, whither the hangman’s 
cart bore prisoners and criminals to be 
executed. A mere enumeration of the 
houses connected with notable persons 
would be tedious. For instance, tablets in¬ 
form the curious that this was the house 
occupied by Hume, the historian; this the 
residence of John Knox; here Boswell 
entertained Samuel Johnson on their way 
to the Hebrides, etc. 

One of the most notable buildings is St. 
Giles’ Church, with a history dating frcm 
1259. It is the Presbyterian or parish 
church of Edinburgh. John Knox preached 
here. The Solemn Pledge and Covenant 
was signed here. In his attempt to intro¬ 
duce Episcopacy and thus unify the 
churches of England and Scotland, 
Charles I made St. Giles’ a cathedral; 
and it was here that Jenny Geddes, in 
righteous indignation, threw her cutty stool 
at the head of the dean who began to read 
from the new Episcopal service book. The 
lofty spire of St. Giles’ overlooks the site 
of the ancient Tolbooth or the county gaol 
immortalized in Scott’s Heart of Midlothi¬ 
an. The spot where the gaol once stood 
is marked by the large figure of a heart 
wrought in the stone pavement. 


The old Parliament House is now de¬ 
voted to the use of the supreme court. 
The great hall, with its oak carvings and 
statues of eminent men, is now a walk or 
lobby for lawyers in their wigs and black 
gowns. In this connection may be men¬ 
tioned the Advocates’ Library, the most 
extensive and valuable collection of books 
in Scotland. It is one of five libraries 
entitled by law to a copy of every book 
issued in the United Kingdom. 

A description of all the buildings of 
note is out of the question, but visitors 
seldom fail to inspect and admire Holy- 
rood Palace at the lower end of the street. 
It was originally an abbey. The main 
entrance is a magnificent stone portal rich¬ 
ly carved. Queen Mary’s apartments are 
shown still, and are said to be much as 
she left them. Her bedroom contains the 
ancient bed and other furnishings used 
by the hapless princess. The place at the 
head of the staircase where the assassins 
stabbed her favorite, Rizzio, is pointed out. 
A dark stain, possibly but not probably of 
blood, still marks the spot. Other build¬ 
ings are those of the University, the Royal 
Infirmary, and Heriot’s Hospital. The 
latter was founded by George Heriot, the 
Scotch goldsmith of James I, whose name 
is familiar to readers of the Fortunes of 
Nigel. 

Edinburgh has never been a commercial 
or manufacturing city. To the last state¬ 
ment, one exception must be made. Edin¬ 
burgh has been noted as a center of the 
publishing trade. An English translation 
of the Bible was published here as early 
as 1576. The Edinburgh Review and 
Blackwood’s Magazine, Chambers’s En¬ 
cyclopedia, The Encyclopedia Britannica, 
the Waver ley Novels, and many other not¬ 
able publications have come from the 
Edinburgh press. 

The population of the city in 1903 was 
327,441. In 1908 it was 350,524. The 
city is growing. It depends for prosperity 
on the courts of law, the university with 
3,000 students, and various colleges, as 
well as its desirability as a place of resi¬ 
dence. The climate is delightful, and 
favorable to longevity. The average tem¬ 
perature for January is 36.6°; that for 









EDISON—EDMONTON 


July is 58.3°. ' The annual rainfall is 
twenty-six inches. The city has just ex¬ 
pended $56,000,000 in building reservoirs 
and securing a supply of water from the 
head waters of the Tweed. 

Sir Walter Scott is the writer who has 
described Edinburgh as Dickens has de¬ 
scribed London. His birthplace is pointed 
out. A Gothic canopy in the New Town 
on Princes Street overlooking the gardens 
shelters a statue of the great romancer. Its 
topmost pinnacle is 200 feet high. The 
available niches are occupied by figures 
of Scott’s characters. Meg Merrilies, Red- 
gauntlet, Rob Roy, Wamba, and three 
score others are all there. It is one of the 
most remarkable monuments ever erected 
to the memory of a literary man—a fitting 
tribute from the city by him so often and 
so well described. 

Edinburgh is known by many names, as 
Modern Athens, the City of Homes, 
Dunedin, and the Capital of the North. 
“A city of incomparable loveliness,” says 
Oliver Wendell Holmes, but, to the gen¬ 
uine Scot at home or abroad, the best 
name of all is just Auld Reekie—Old 
Smoky. 

See Scotland; Scott. 

Edison, Thomas Alva, a noted Amer¬ 
ican inventor. He was born at Milan, 
Ohio, February 11, 1847. Financial cir¬ 
cumstances prevented his going to school. 
At the age of twelve he was a newsboy on 
the Grand Trunk Railway. He was “fond 
of reading.” The printing press and the 
telegraph instrument had a fascination for 
him. In 1862 he bought a small hand 
press, set it up in an abandoned freight 
car, and published a small weekly paper 
which he called The Grand Trunk Herald. 
Later he became a telegraph operator at 
Mount Clemens. He was noted for rapid¬ 
ity and accuracy. It is said, however, that 
fondness for playing practical jokes cost 
him several positions. 

In 1864 he invented what is known as 
the automatic telegraph repeater. This 
was the first of a long list of electrical in¬ 
ventions. He invented, also, a machine 
for indicating the price of stock, known as 
a commercial stock indicator. This he 
sold to a New York company for $40,000. 


With this money he set up a laboratory and 
workshop at Newark, New Jersey. In 
1876 he removed to Menlo Park, from 
which he is called often “The Wizard of 
Menlo Park.” Later he established - him¬ 
self at West Orange, New Jersey. The 
manufacturing end of his establishment 
gives employment to several hundred men. 
He keeps a large force of experts busy at 
work making experiments under his direc¬ 
tion. Among Edison’s more noted in¬ 
dentions are the phonograph, a long dis¬ 
tance telephone, the megaphone, the 
incandescent electric lamp, and a storage 
battery for cars and automobiles. 

Honors have been heaped upon Edison 
by foreign governments. In 1878 he was 
made chevalier of the French Legion of 
Honor. He has been honored also by 
Italy and by the Society of Arts of Great 
Britain. He is a man of undoubted intel¬ 
lectuality and of equal industry. He has 
said himself that “genius is two per cent 
inspiration and ninety-eight per cent per¬ 
spiration.” He reads omnivorously. Each 
day’s mail brings him new books from all 
parts of the world. His method of pro¬ 
cedure is to determine first of* all that a 
certain article or device is desirable. He 
then sets himself and his men at work to 
invent it. He is a man without time for 
gossip and none for rest. Frequently he 
telephones for his meals to be sent to his 
workroom. The carriage which now calls 
for him is obliged frequently to wait for 
hours until he has come to a stopping place. 
Fortunately, he passed the point long since 
where money is a consideration. It is im¬ 
possible to get his ear on money matters. 
Invention is his consuming passion. 

Edmonton, the capital city of the prov¬ 
ince of Alberta, Canada. Edmonton is 
on three railroads, the Canadian Pacific, 
the Canadian Northern, and the Grand 
Trunk Pacific, and is important as a dis¬ 
tributing station for the central and north¬ 
ern parts of the province. It is situated 
in a particularly rich, although as yet un¬ 
developed territory. The soil of the sur¬ 
rounding country is fertile, fuel is abun¬ 
dant and valuable, raw materials for many 
lines of manufacture are present in quanti¬ 
ties sufficient to insure the growth of 


EDMUND II—EDWARD I 


Edmonton to a large and prosperous city. 
Its population is 25,000. See Alberta. 

Edmund II (989-1016), king of the 
West Saxons. He was surnamed Iron¬ 
sides. He succeeded his father Ethelred 
“the Unready,” in April, 1016. Canute 
the Dane forced Edmund to divide his 
kingdom. Canute took the northern part 
—the York end, and Edmund retained the 
southern or London end. At Edmund’s 
death Canute assumed the control of the 
whole kingdom. 

Edmunds, George Franklin (1828-), 
an American statesman. He was born in 
Richmond, Vermont, became a lawyer in 
1849, sat in the lower house of the state 
legislature from 1854 to 1859, and in the 
state senate from 1861 to 1862. Four years 
later he went to Washington as a senator 
from Vermont, a position to which he was 
successively re-elected until 1891. After 
Mr. Arthur became president, Mr. Ed¬ 
munds acted as president pro tem of the 
senate. He served on many important 
committees, championed the bill of 1882 
suppressing polygamy in Utah, helped to 
prosecute President Johnson, and was 
otherwise active in public affairs until 
1891, when he retired to resume his prac¬ 
tice as a constitutional lawyer. In 1880 
and again in 1884 he w r as a candidate for 
the presidential nomination on the Repub¬ 
lican ticket. 

Edward I (1239-1307), surnamed 
“Longshanks,” king of England. He 
reigned 1272-1307. He was born at West¬ 
minster and died near Carlyle. He was 
the son of Henry III and Eleanor of Prov¬ 
ence. He married Eleanor of Castile. 
While a young man, Edward assisted his 
father in curbing the power of the barons, 
overthrowing their leader, Simon de Mont- 
fort, at Evesham in 1265. At the request 
of the pope Edward took a prominent part 
in the Seventh Crusade. He captured 
Nazareth from the Turks, and massacred 
the inhabitants. In revenge for this cruel¬ 
ty, it is thought, an assassin stabbed him 
in three places with a poisoned arrow. 
Owing to a magnificent constitution he 
came through with his life. A story runs 
to the effect that Eleanor saved him by 
sucking out the poison with her lips. 


On hearing of the death of his father 
Edward returned home to be crowned. He 
was an active, arbitrary ruler. He accom¬ 
plished the conquest of Wales. He took 
measures to expel the Jew r s from Eng¬ 
land. He interfered in the affairs of 
Scotland, placed Baliol on the throne and 
again deposed him, carrying the ancient 
coronation stone of Scotland to Westmin- 
ster, where it yet remains. He executed 
Sir William Wallace and died on his way 
to Scotland to suppress Bruce. 

Though the,name of Edward I is not a 
source of pleasure to the Welsh and to the 
Scotch, he was a royal English monarch— 
a very prince of men to his own people. 
Elis soldiers heard him urge clemency for 
the followers of Montfort. They saw 
him weep in bitter grief for the death of 
his father, though it placed him on the 
throne of England. He lay with his sol¬ 
diers on the ground and suffered both hun¬ 
ger and thirst in the mountains of Wales 
and on the Scottish border. Under all 
circumstances he was an Englishman and 
a soldier, a hard master, but a loyal, single- 
minded prince—one who loved his people 
and was loved by them. Edward was “un¬ 
selfish, laborious, conscientious, haughtily 
observant of truth and self-respect, tem¬ 
perate, reverent of duty and religious. For 
the most part,” continues Green, the his¬ 
torian, “his impulses were generous, trust¬ 
ful, averse from cruelty, prone to forgive¬ 
ness.” “No man ever asked mercy of me,” 
said he in his old age, “and was refused.” 
Those who read the fate of Wallace, sent 
to a felon’s death by Edward, need to 
know that this haughty king is the same 
English Edward who loved his Eleanor 
while living, and ceased not to love her 
when dead; and that this is the same Ed¬ 
ward who reared a cross at Charing, and 
wherever else the bier of Eleanor rested 
on the way to the grave. 

Edward deserves well at the hand of the 
historian. He reorganized the courts of 
England in the interest of speedy and im¬ 
partial justice. He equalized the burden 
of taxation and of military service. He 
was the first English monarch to summon 
merchants and burghers to sit in Parlia¬ 
ment. In person he was a tall, deep-chest- 





EDWARD II—EDWARD III 


ed, long-limbed man. The people called 
him Longshanks. He instituted legal re¬ 
forms; the jurists call him the “English 
Justinian. Soldier, lover, and lawgiver, 
Edward was the greatest of the Plantage- 
nets. 

Edward II (1284-1327), king of Eng¬ 
land. He was the son of Edward I and 
Eleanor of Castile. He was born at 
Caernarvon Castle, Wales, and in 1301 
was given the title “Prince of Wales,” then 
extinct by the death in battle of the last 
Welsh prince. He was the first of the 
English princes to bear this name. Ed¬ 
ward II resembled the pleasure-loving Stu¬ 
arts more than he did his martial father. 
He was governed by an insolent and un¬ 
worthy favorite, Piers Gaveston, whom, in¬ 
deed, Edward’s barons executed. This is 
the “Proud Edward” who in 1314, invaded 
Scotland at the head of a large force and 
was defeated ignominiously by Robert 
Bruce at Bannockburn. Edward was un¬ 
fortunate in family affairs. Queen Isa¬ 
bella, sent on a mission to France, entered 
into a traitorous, not to say criminal, in¬ 
trigue with Roger Mortimer, a disaffected 
young baron, and returned to England at 
the head of an armed force. The con¬ 
spirators seized the Tower of London and 
took Edward prisoner. A Parliament, 
completely under their influence, deposed 
Edward and placed his son, a mere boy, 
on the throne. A few months later, Ed¬ 
ward was sent from the Tower to Kenil¬ 
worth Castle and later to Berkeley Castle, 
where he was assassinated by two ruffians 
in the pay of Mortimer. 

Edward III (1312-1377), king of 
England. He was born at Windsor and 
died at Richmond. As stated, he was 
placed on his father’s throne in 1327, at 
the age of fifteen. During his minority 
the kingdom was ruled ostensibly by a re¬ 
gency of twelve lords. In reality authority 
was usurped by the guilty Isabella and her 
partner, Mortimer. In 1330 Edward III, 
now eighteen years of age, took matters into 
his own hands. Pie broke into the strong 
castle of Nottingham, where Isabella and 
Mortimer were, and dragged Mortimer to 
the Tower. Mortimer was brought before 
the Parliament and charged with the mur¬ 


der of Edward II. He was found guilty 
and was hanged on an elm at Tyburn. 
Edward could not be expected to take 
severe measures against his mother. She 
was sent into retirement, in reality into 
hopeless captivity, where she was visited 
once a year by her son, the king. 

Edward’s reign was noted for wars. He 
engaged in a desperate attempt to subju¬ 
gate Scotland. He set up a claim to the 
French throne. Pie added “King of 
France” to his title, a practice maintained 
by British sovereigns until 1802. Edward 
thus entered upon a long series of conflicts 
with France, known as the “Hundred 
Years’ War.” No little success followed 
the banner of England; yet, before the 
close of Edward’s reign, nearly all the 
conquered territory was lost again. 

During this reign great changes came 
to the common people. The Black Death, 
the greatest plague that ever visited the 
country, swept away half of the peasants. 
Laborers were scarce, wages rose. A sys¬ 
tem of practical serfdom came to an end. 
It was impossible in some sections to get 
help to gather the harvest. At the en¬ 
treaty of landowners Parliament passed an 
act, called the Statute of Laborers, which 
reestablished the old prices of labor, and 
compelled laboring men to seek employ¬ 
ment within their own parishes. This led 
in the next reign to what is known as the 
Peasants’ Rising of 1381. 

Ever since the Norman Conquest Latin 
had been the language of business and offi¬ 
cial correspondence. French was the lan¬ 
guage of society and of light literature. 
The peasantry held to the old Anglo- 
Saxon or English language. During Ed¬ 
ward’s reign this language began to crowd 
Latin and French to the wall. The writ¬ 
ings of Wyclif gave a powerful impulse 
to the rise of English. Toward the close 
of Edward’s reign the English language 
replaced the French language in the 
schools. In 1357 a statute was passed re¬ 
quiring the use of English in courts of 
justice. 

A very great change took place also in 
the form and powers of Parliament. It be¬ 
came divided into two houses with enlarged 
powers. The war with France was expen- 


EDWARD IV—EDWARD VI 


sive. It was necessary to ask Parliament for 
large grants of money. The House of Com¬ 
mons established the principle that redress 
of grievances must precede a grant of sup¬ 
plies. The Good Parliament, established in 
1376, impeached Edward’s ministers, estab¬ 
lishing much the same method of procedure 
now followed in English-speaking coun¬ 
tries. 

See Baliol; Crecy; Black Prince; 
Black Death ; Impeachment. 

Edward IV (1441-1483), king of 
England. Pie was born at Rouen, France 
Edward IV ascended the throne in 1461. 
His accession and the earlier events of his 
reign are but episodes in the famous Wars 
of the Roses. Edward was the second son 
of Richard, Duke of York. By the death 
of his father, at the battle of Wakefield 
in 1460, Edward became the head of the 
Yorkists. On hearing of his father’s death 
he gathered together a combined army of 
Welsh and English and won a victory over 
the Lancastrians at Mortimer’s Cross. A 
few days later the Lancastrians were vic¬ 
torious at St. Albans, but, while they lin¬ 
gered here plundering, Edward set out for 
London on horseback. He was ' a hand¬ 
some, popular prince. The Yorkists hailed 
him with acclaim and, in the absence of 
the Lancastrian king, Henry VI, pro¬ 
claimed him sovereign. 

The story of the struggle between the 
Yorkists and Lancastrians is unprofitable 
reading. Warwick, the king-maker, had no 
sooner placed Edward on the throne, than 
he became offended because the king con¬ 
cluded a marriage with Elizabeth Grey, in¬ 
stead of espousing the sister of Louis XI of 
France. Warwick fomented an insurrection 
and fled to France; yet returned, drove Ed¬ 
ward into exile in Holland, and replaced 
the last Lancastrian Henry on the throne. 
To cut these wearisome details short, Ed¬ 
ward returned, defeated the forces of Hen¬ 
ry and Warwick, the latter falling in bat¬ 
tle at Barnet, April 14, 1471. A few 
weeks later Edward defeated the forces of 
Queen Margaret at Tewkesbury. Henry 
died in the Tower, and Edward’s reign 
was secure. 

During Edward’s reign popular govern¬ 
ment went backward. A favorite invention 


of his was a system of “benevolences.” 
This was a gift of money which he re¬ 
quested from rich subjects, and which they 
were afraid to refuse. This system of be¬ 
nevolences rendered the king in a measure 
independent of Parliament. The pow¬ 
er of that body was correspondingly di¬ 
minished. 

See Warwick; Wars of the Roses. 

Edward V (1470-1483), king of Eng¬ 
land. He was born at Westminster Abbey. 
He was the heir of Edward IV, but Ed¬ 
ward V was little more than twelve years 
old at the time of his father’s death. His 
uncle, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, the 
same who is known in history as Richard 
III, appointed himself guardian of the 
young king. A servile Parliament, pro¬ 
claimed him Protector of the Realm. The 
wicked duke secured the execution of such 
noblemen as stood in his way. He then 
called a meeting of Parliament, and se¬ 
cured the passage of an act declaring the 
marriage of Edward IV to the mother of 
the young king illegal. Richard then sent 
Edward V and his younger brother to the 
Tower, where they were murdered. Brack- 
enbury, the constable of the Tower, re¬ 
fused to obey Richard when ordered to 
put the two princes to death; but Sir 
James Tyrrel, an infamous noble, armed 
with a warrant ordering the constable to 
give him the keys, admitted two assassins, 
who smothered the princes under pillows 
while they were asleep. Shakespeare has 
made much of the murder in his play, 
Richard III. 

Edward VI (1537-1553), king of 
England. He was born at Hampton 
Court and died at Greenwich. This prince 
was the son of Henry VIII and his third 
queen, Jane Seymour. He succeeded to 
the throne in 1547. His reign was but 
nominal. The affairs of the kingdom were 
managed by a regency under the Duke 
of Somerset and later the Duke of North¬ 
umberland. Edward was betrothed to 
Mary, Queen of Scots, but Mary was spir¬ 
ited off to France by Scottish noblemen 
who rendered the marriage impossible. 
The Book of Common Prayer was prepared, 
chiefly by Archbishop Cranmer, during 
this reign. Edward died of consumption. 


EDWARD VII 


He was constrained by certain noblemen 
to leave a will bequeathing the crown to 
Lady Jane Grey, but he was succeeded by 
his half sister, Mary, whose title to the 
throne was unquestionable. 

Edward VII (1841-1910), king of 
Great Britain and Ireland. He was also 
styled Emperor of India. He was the first 
son, the second child, of Queen Victoria 
and the Prince Consort, Albert of Saxe- 
Coburg. He was born at Buckingham Pal¬ 
ace, November 9, 1841. At the age of 
fourteen he was made Prince of Wales. 
His education was supervised by compe¬ 
tent private instructors. He also took lec¬ 
tures at Oxford, Cambridge, and Edin¬ 
burgh. He traveled extensively. In 1860 
he visited Canada and the United States. 
In 1862 he visited Egypt, Palestine, and 
Athens. His traveling companion was 
Arthur Stanley, later Dean of Westmin¬ 
ster Abbey. In 1875 he visited India, and 
in 1885 paid a visit to Ireland. He came 
to the throne at the death of his mother, 
January 22, 1901. Formal coronation serv¬ 
ices were held in Westminster Abbey, 
August 9, 1902. March 10, 1863, he was 
married to Alexandra, the eldest daughter 
of the king of Denmark. The king and 
queen had five children, two sons and 
three daughters. Albert, the eldest, died in 
1892. George, the second son, now on 
the throne, was born June 3, 1865. Louise 
was born in 1867—she is the wife of the 
Duke of Fife; Victoria Alexandra, in 
1868; and Maud Charlotte, in 1869, now 
wife of Haakon VII, king of Norway. 

Owing to the long reign of his honored 
mother, Edward came to the throne late in 
life. At date of his formal coronation he 
was over sixty years of age. In his youth he 
was a prime favorite with sporting and so¬ 
ciety people. He was fond of yacht racing, 
cricket, athletics, and shooting. His colts 
won three Derbys. He was fond of cards 
and played for high stakes. He spent money 
liberally, far outrunning a princely allow¬ 
ance. Owing to royal etiquette, which for¬ 
bids the heir from showing an interest in 
public affairs, Edward gave little promise 
of statesmanship. On his accession to the 
throne, however, the king pleased his friends 
by an assumption of quiet dignity, a patri¬ 
otic regard for the welfare of his subjects, 


and prudence in the discharge of his duties. 
Edward was a bluff, democratic king, 
peaceable in disposition. He exerted a 
stronger influence over Parliament and his 
ministry than did his royal mother. He 
assumed at once a leading place among 
the crowned heads of Europe, as befitted 
the head of the most powerful nation in 
the world. In diplomatic circles he ex¬ 
erted an influence in favor of fair play and 
of good feeling, winning the name of Ed¬ 
ward the Peacemaker. 

In personal appearance the king was a 
typical Englishman, rather below the av¬ 
erage stature, of strong and heavy build. 
His face was ruddy and betokened good 
health and good spirits. He wore his 
gray beard trimmed to a sharp point. A 
thin circle of gray hair diminished until 
he was quite bald. Even in his latter days 
he continued to be one of the best dressed 
men in Europe, and was regarded as a 
model for refinement of dress and bearing. 

At state functions King Edward revived 
all the pomp and circumstance of medieval 
days. He drove to Westminster at the 
opening of Parliament in a sumptuous 
royal coach, attended by heralds, equerries, 
and outriders and a vast retinue, forming 
a pageant of royal splendor. On these oc¬ 
casions he wore the full robes of majesty. 

Tactfulness was a conspicuous character¬ 
istic. The late king was frank, loyal, and 
warmhearted always. Those who associ¬ 
ated with him said he was emphatically a 
“good fellow,” simple and courteous, but 
a stickler for the deference which his rank 
demanded. 

King Edward’s death was regretted uni¬ 
versally. It came at a crisis in a long 
contest between the Commons and the 
House of Lords. The Liberals were urg¬ 
ing him to notify the Lords that unless 
they were willing not to obstruct the will 
of the people as expressed by the popular 
house, the hereditary house would be in¬ 
vaded by a sufficient number of newly 
created peers to effect desired legislation. 
King Edward was succeeded by his oldest 
living son who will be known in history as 
George V. 

See Buckingham Palace; Windsor; 
Balmoral; Victoria; British Empire; 
Prince of Wales. 


EDWARD THE CONFESSOR—EEL 


Edward the Confessor (1004-1066), 
king of the West Saxons. He was the son 
of Ethelred II and Emma of Normandy. 
During the days of Danish supremacy he 
lived in Normandy. On the death of 
Hardicanute he returned to England at 
the invitation of Godwine, whose daugh¬ 
ter, Edith, he married. In 1042 the Wit- 
an, a national assembly of lords and 
ecclesiastics, placed him on the throne. Ed¬ 
ward came of royal lineage, but was not 
the direct heir. Edward was a man of 
excellent personal qualities, but he lacked 
force and decisiveness. During his reign 
the Normans acquired great influence at 
court. William the Norman, who after¬ 
ward conquered England, even went so 
far as to claim that Edward left him the 
kingdom of England in his will. Edward 
died without children; he was succeeded 
by his wife’s brother, Harold, the same 
who was overthrown by William. Edward 
caused a notable compilation of laws to be 
made. This code is known as “The Laws 
of Edward the Confessor.” He died in 
the odor of sanctity, and was canonized by 
Pope Alexander III in 1161. 

Edward the Elder (870-925), king of 
England. He succeeded his father, Al¬ 
fred the Great, in 901. Edward continued 
the work of unifying the kingdom, which 
had been carried on so well by his dis¬ 
tinguished father. He annexed Mercia. 
He repelled the attacks of foreign Danes.' 
He erected strong fortifications on the 
Welsh and Northumbrian frontiers. 

Edwards, Jonathan (1703-1758), a 
celebrated New England divine and the¬ 
ologian. He was born in Windsor, Con¬ 
necticut, and died at Princeton, New Jer¬ 
sey. He graduated at Yale in 1717* After 
a short term as a tutor in that institution he 
became pastor at Northampton, where he re¬ 
mained twenty-three years, participating in 
revival work. In 1750 he was dismissed by 
the N orthampton church and became a mis¬ 
sionary among the Massachusetts Indians. 
In 1758 he was elected president of Prince¬ 
ton College, and, as stated, died the same 
year. Edwards had a powerful intellect. He 
was an impressive preacher, somber and 
even gloomy in his religious opinions and 
sentiments, but earnest, unaffected, and 


nobly conscientious. Of many theological 
works his Freedom of the Will and Origi¬ 
nal Sin are most noted. Edwards’ life 
and work were so colored by a somber the¬ 
ology that posterity has not done credit to 
one of the sweetest spirits of the age. Be¬ 
lieving, as he did, that his fellowmen were 
tottering on the brink of the bottomless 
pit, no trivial matters were worthy of the 
attention of an immortal soul; and yet we 
find in him distinct traces of the future 
Emerson and his school of calm thinkers. 
“True religion,” said he, “in a great meas¬ 
ure consists in holy affections. A love of 
divine things for the beauty and sweetness 
of their moral excellency is the spring of 
all holy affection.” See Dwight; Burr. 

Eel, a family of serpent-shaped fish. 
They are long and slender with soft, slimy 
skins. The body is round or else ribbon¬ 
shaped. The scales are imbedded so deep 
that they cannot be seen or felt till the 
skin is dried. The gill openings are small, 
and close so tightly that eels can live out 
of water for some time. Some species even 
leave the water and glide over meadows at 
night in search of food. They are found 
in warm and temperate climates. Some spe¬ 
cies inhabit salt, others fresh water, and 
others again migrate. Fresh water eels lie 
dormant in muddy bottoms during the 
winter. Aristotle thought they sprang 
from mud. A popular idea in England at 
one time was that the hair of a stallion’s 
tail, left in water, would turn into eels. 
It is now known that they breed by means 
of eggs or ova like other fishes. A nest 
of pebbles in running water is preferred. 
A colony of eels in the Saco River, Maine, 
formed a heap of stones fifteen feet long 
and three feet high, in which to deposit 
eggs. The eel grasps a stone, sucker fash¬ 
ion, and drags it along the bottom till it is 
in place. 

The conger eel of European waters at¬ 
tains a length of three to ten feet and a 
weight of five to one hundred pounds. It 
preys on other fish. The sharp-nosed eel 
of Europe swarms in the rivers of Great 
Britain, and is a staple article in the fish 
markets. The greenish olive eel of this 
country is abundant in streams from Maine 
to the Mississippi and Brazil. It is taken 


EFFICIENCY—EGGLESTON 


with spears by torchlight, and in eel-pots. 
The latter is a willow-basket contrivance 
to which Washington Irving refers in de¬ 
scribing the schoolhouse of Sleepy Hol¬ 
low, so constructed that eels can enter but 
not get out again. 

An electric eel called the gymnotus, 
found in the swamps of South America ap¬ 
pears to be charged with electricity ca¬ 
pable of giving a man a severe shock. 

It being very difficult to catch the gymnoti 
with nets, on account of their extreme agility, it 
was resolved to procure some by intoxicating or 
benumbing them with the roots of certain plants, 
which when thrown into the water produce that 
effect. At this juncture the Indians informed 
them that they would fish with horses, and soon 
brought from the savanna about thirty of these 
animals, which they drove into the pool. 

The extraordinary noise caused by the horses’ 
hoofs makes the fishes issue from the mud and 
excites them to combat. These yellowish and 
livid eels, resembling large aquatic snakes, swim 
at the surface of the water, and crowd under the 
bellies of the horses and mules. The struggle 
between animals of so different an organization 
affords a very interesting sight. The Indians, 
furnished with harpoons and long slender reeds, 
closely surround the pool. Some of them climb 
the^trees, whose branches stretch horizontally over 
the water. By their wild cries and their long 
reeds they prevent the horses from coming to 
the edge of the basin. The eels, stunned by the 
noise, defend themselves by repeated discharges 
of their electrical batteries, and for a long time 
seem likely to obtain the victory. Several horses 
"sink under the violence of the invisible blows 
which they receive in the organs most essential 
to life, and, benumbed by the force and frequency 
of the shocks, disappear beneath the surface. 
Others, panting, with erect mane, and haggard 
eyes expressive of anguish, raise themselves and 
endeavour to escape from the storm which over¬ 
takes them, but are driven back by the Indians. 
A few, however, succeed in eluding the active 
vigilance of the fishers; they gain the shore, 
stumble at every step, and stretch themselves out 
on the sand, exhausted with fatigue, and having 
their limbs benumbed by the electric shocks of the 
gymnoti. 

In less than five minutes two horses were 
killed. The eel, which is five feet long, presses 
itself against the belly of the horse, and makes 
a discharge along the whole extent of its electric 
organ. It attacks at once the heart, the viscera, 
and the caeliac plexus of the abdominal nerves. 
It is natural that the effect which a horse ex¬ 
periences should be more powerful than that 
produced by the same fish on man, when he 
touches it only by one of the extremities. The 
horses are probably not killed, but only stunned, 
they are drowned from the impossibility of rising 
amid the prolonged struggle between the other 
horses and eels.—Alexander von Humboldt. 


fefficiency. See Machine. 

Egede, Hans, a'ge-de (1686-1758), a 

Danish missionary, termed the Apostle of 
Greenland. He was born in Senjen, Nor¬ 
way, and died in the Island of Falster, 
Denmark. He was educated for the Lu¬ 
theran ministry, but obtained a commission 
from the Danish government to convert 
the Eskimos of Greenland to Christianity. 
With this purpose he and his two boys took 
up their residence among the tribes on the 
coast of Greenland and accompanied them 
in their hunting expeditions. He resided 
among the Eskimos fifteen years, studying 
the language, healing the sick, and reliev¬ 
ing the miseries of the natives in a thou¬ 
sand ways. He made long trips to reach 
the isolated villages, and, though discour¬ 
aged by the small number of actual con¬ 
verts, he won the confidence of the natives 
to an extent not previously attained. Trad¬ 
ing ships visiting the coast in the summer 
time kept Egede in communication with 
the world. He received packages of books 
and papers, clothing and medicines, and 
sent his sons home for a time to be edu¬ 
cated. In 1736 he left the mission work 
to his son Paul and returned to Denmark. 
Paul remained among the Eskimos until 
1740, when he, too, returned to Denmark, 
where he received the title of “Bishop of 
Greenland.” Father and son worked to¬ 
gether in the preparation of an Eskimo 
dictionary and grammar, and in the trans¬ 
lation of the Gospels into the Eskimo lan¬ 
guage. They wrote several volumes of 
experiences, valuable for their contribution 
to natural history and a knowledge of the 
Greenland Eskimo. 

Eggleston, eg'lz-ton, Edward (1837- 
1902), an American novelist. He was born 
at Vevay, Indiana, and entered the Metho¬ 
dist ministry at nineteen. He spent 10 
years in Minnesota preaching and tramp¬ 
ing for his health—even at one time sell¬ 
ing toilet articles from a peddler’s pack. 
Later he attracted attention by magazine 
articles and became editor of the Little 
Corporal and of the Independent, as w r ell 
as a contributor to Scribner’s Monthly. In 
1871 The Hoosicr Schoolmaster, his first 
novel, appeared. This was the first of a 
series of stories dealing with the Middle 


EGGPLANT—EGGS 


West. The End of the World, The Mys¬ 
tery of Metropolisville, The Circuit Rid¬ 
er, Roxy, and The Graysons: A Story of 
Illinois, have found many readers. Some 
writings of a historical nature, particularly 
his Beginners of a Nation, show that Eg¬ 
gleston might have succeeded in this field; 
but his reputation rests on The Hoosier 
Schoolmaster. This novel occupies a 
place of its own in American literature in 
that it is the first of its kind. One can¬ 
not see that the style and plot of this 
novel have grown out of any story Eggles¬ 
ton can have read. It appears to be the 
beginning of a new kind of novel writing, 
of which David Harum and Eben Holden 
are examples. 

Eggplant, a tropical plant sometimes 
called Guinea squash. It is thought to 
be a native of the East Indies. It is a 
relative of the tomato, ground cherry, and 
nightshade. The plant is raised in much 
the same manner as the tomato. It re¬ 
quires deep, rich, dry, mellow soil. It 
grows best in the Southern States but is 
raised successfully as far north as New 
York. Early fruit is secured by forcing in 
hothouses. The fruit of the European 
varieties is pale or white. American gar¬ 
deners prefer black or purple fruit. The 
eggplant is subject to various blights and 
insects that render its cultivation more dif¬ 
ficult than that of the tomato. When 
properly crated the fruit bears shipment 
better than the tomato. 

Eggs, an important product of the poul¬ 
try yard. Commercially speaking, the 
world’s annual production of eggs yields 
more money than all the gold mines sev¬ 
eral times over. The value of the eggs 
consumed in Great Britain in 1903 is es¬ 
timated at $63,000,000. According to 
United States Consul Mahin, the incred¬ 
ible number of 2,361,867,640 eggs, selling 
at from 24 to 48 cents a dozen in the cities, 
was imported into England during 1903. 

The small farmers of Denmark, living 
on two and three acre farms, lead the 
world now, it is said, in the scientific pro¬ 
duction of eggs. Their sales have risen 
from 50,000 dozen in 1870, the year of 
the Franco-Prussian War, to 35,967,000 
dozen in 1908. The Danish Cooperative 


Egg Export Association has a membership 
of 33,500 egg raisers, divided into 500 lo¬ 
cal circles. Each circle collects the eggs 
produced on the farms of its members, and 
ships to the general association. All prof¬ 
its of the association are returned to the 
circles and by them to the members. Each 
egg must be clean, and be marked with 
a rubber stamp with the number of the 
circle and the number of the member de¬ 
livering it. In this way, bad eggs may be 
traced to the original seller, who is fined 
$1.34 for the first offense and double that 
for the second. Eggs must be delivered to 
the association before they are seven days 
old. A producer is required to gather ev¬ 
ery day, and, in hot weather, twice a day. 
The association receives eggs at eight ship¬ 
ping centers. All eggs are tested with 
electric light and assorted by quick-finger¬ 
ed women into six sizes. The favorite 
weight in the market is that of 7 Va eggs to 
the pound. The entire cost of handling eggs 
from the nest until they are on board the 
steamer, en route for England, is 1^4 cents 
per dozen. In this way the Danish house¬ 
wife gets all her eggs are worth, and con¬ 
sumers receive eggs of excellent quality. 

The Koreans have a queer way of bring¬ 
ing eggs to market. The eggs are laid end 
to end on a wisp of grass. Another wisp 
is laid on top. A shred is wrapped about 
and tied between each two eggs. These 
eggs are sold by the roll or stick. 

American farmers formerly took eggs 
to market packed in oats or bran. The 
egg-case now in use holds thirty dozen. 
Sheets of pasteboard with slips of the same 
material form cubical compartments, one 
for each egg. In the egg-laying season, 
a large part of the American product goes 
into cold storage for winter sale. Accord¬ 
ing to Mr. Hastings of the Bureau of 
Animal Industry of the Department of 
Agriculture, the total loss to the egg trade 
caused by needless deterioration runs into 
large figures. The causes of the losses and 
their estimated proportion to the total crop 
value are summed up as follows: Dirty 
e g£ s > 2 P e r cent; breakage, 2 per cent; 
chick development or heated eggs, 5 per 
cent; shrunken or held eggs, 5 per cent; 
rotten eggs, 2.5 per cent; moldy or bad 


EGINHARD—EGYPT 


flavor, 0.5 per cent; total 17 per cent. The 
corn belt is the center of egg production. 
Eggs are shipped eastward and westward, 
not by the case or car, but by the train 
load. Canadian eggs brought over the 
border pay a duty of five cents a dozen. 

The annual value of the eggs produced 
in the United States varies from $145,000,- 
000 to double that sum. Iotva leads with 
100,000,000 dozen, closely followed by 
Ohio, Illinois, Kansas, and Missouri. The 
average price paid producers is between 
15 and 20 cents a dozen. The production 
of eggs is so distributed that it is hard to 
realize that, if all the eggs of the United 
States for a year were packed properly in 
cases and put aboard cars, a train of over 
800 miles in length would be required to 
transport them. Our eggs for 1905 were 
worth $280,000,000 or more than our 
wheat or hogs or sheep or sugar. Cattle, 
cotton, and corn are the only rivals of the 
American chicken. 

A hen’s egg is reputed to contain six 
parts of white, three parts of yolk, and one 
part of shell. It is composed of lime, fat, 
salt, albumen, and water. The fresher an 
egg, the heavier it is. If kept cool and 
dry, shut in from air, an egg will keep 
sound, though not fresh, indefinitely. 
The egg of a duck is richer and more 
strongly flavored than that of a hen. The 
eggs of geese and turkeys are too valuable 
for the ordinary market. 

See Chicken ; Poultry. 

Eginhard, a'gin-hart, or Einhard 
(771-840), a German historian chiefly re¬ 
membered for his Life of Charlemagne . 
He was born in wdiat is now Hesse-Darm¬ 
stadt. Alcuin, Charlemagne’s friend, 
was his teacher. As a young man he 
gained the confidence of Charlemagne and 
was made his secretary, going with him 
on all his journeys and expeditions of con¬ 
quest. Small wonder that his biography of 
the great king bubbles over with pithy in¬ 
cidents ! Besides its interest as a narrative 
the book is perhaps the most valuable his¬ 
torically of the biographies that have come 
down from the Middle Ages. He wrote 
also Annales of the French King, and a 
book of Letters, both of great historical in¬ 
terest. After Charlemagne’s death Egin¬ 


hard transferred his services to Louis le 
Debonnaire. See Alcuin ; Charlemagne. 

Egmont, Count (1522-1568), a Dutch 
statesman and soldier. Egmont’s life be¬ 
longs to the stormy period of the Reforma¬ 
tion. He won high reputation as a sol¬ 
dier and commander under the banner of 
Charles V. He regretted the hostility 
which developed later between his coun¬ 
try and his sovereign. Although an ardent 
Roman Catholic, he sided with the Dutch 
and took arms with William, Prince of 
Orange, when Holland was attacked by 
the Spanish. In order to strike terror in¬ 
to the hearts of the Dutch, Philip II order¬ 
ed Egmont seized and executed. He ap¬ 
pears to have been a man of a reflective 
turn of mind and kind feelings. He did 
not sympathize with his people in their 
Protestantism, yet was a sincere patriot. 
He is the chief character in Goethe’s cele¬ 
brated drama of Egmont. The reader will 
also wish to consult Motley’s The Rise of 
the Dutch Republic. See Charles V. 

Egypt, e'jipt, a country of northeast¬ 
ern Africa. Its Mediterranean coast line 
stretches from Syria to Tripoli. Egypt, 
taken in a geographical sense, extends on 
the east to -the Red Sea and reaches west¬ 
ward several days’ journey into the Libyan 
Desert. A vast southern region is bound¬ 
ed by Abyssinia, British East Africa, 
Congo, and French Sudan. The total area 
is about 400,000 square miles. 

Topography. The physical regions of 
Egypt proper are three: The valley of the 
Nile, a desert region on the east, and a 
desert region on the west. The valley it¬ 
self is divided into two portions. The 
southern portion is called upper Egypt. 
It is a narrow valley 10 to 15 miles wide, 
comprised between the precipitous borders 
of elevated table lands. The northern 
portion, called Lower Egypt, widens in¬ 
to the delta of the Nile, and is bordered 
by sandy plains of moderate height. About 
seventy miles above Cairo, there is a 
pouch-shaped widening of the valley, to¬ 
ward the west; this bay is called Fayoum. 
It is a considerable extent of fertile land. 
The native name of Egypt is the Black 
Country, a. term applicable to the soil of 
the Nile only. A journey up the Nile 


is said to be rather monotonous except 
near the southern end of the country, 
where the hills bordering the valley ap¬ 
proach within two or three miles of the 
river. The cultivated lands of the val¬ 
ley are flat and level. The soil is of a 
dark brown color. The peasantry live 
in villages surrounded by palm trees. 
These villages are built on ancient arti¬ 
ficial mounds of earth, heaped up to raise 
the inhabitants above the water in time 
of flood. 

Minerals. In Upper Egypt building 
stone is abundant. Limestone, sandstone, 
and granite are quarried in the bluffs that 
border the valleys. The granite of Syene 
on the Nubian frontier is especially cele¬ 
brated. Its quarries furnished the stone 
for the statues, colossal figures, and obe¬ 
lisks of Egypt. Cleopatra’s Needle in 
Central Park, New York City, is from 
this region. Bitumen, salt, sulphur, and 
alabaster are found in various parts of the 
country. Gold and iron have also been 
obtained from southern Egypt and adja¬ 
cent parts of Nubia. 

Climate. Cultivated Egypt is practical¬ 
ly a rainless country. The atmosphere is 
clear and dry. Rain sometimes falls near 
the Mediterranean. In Upper Egypt there 
are two or three showers a year, some¬ 
times none at all. The country has been 
well called a “Gift of the Nile,” for were 
it not for the Nile it would be a desert. In 
winter the climate is delightful. In sum¬ 
mer, the days are hot, though tempered by 
a north wind from the Mediterranean. The 
spring is the most disagreeable part of the 
year. At this season sand storms from the 
deserts are very annoying. Epidemics 
prevail among the natives, due, it is be¬ 
lieved, to filthy, unsanitary habits, rather 
than to the climate. 

Animals. Save for the palm groves al¬ 
ready mentioned, Egypt is without for¬ 
ests. The wolf, fox, jackal, and hyena 
find shelter in the bluffs and prowl around 
the villages at night. The wild ass, sev¬ 
eral kinds of antelope, and the ostrich are 
still found in the deserts. The hippopota¬ 
mus has been exterminated. Even the 
crocodile, for which Egypt was once fa¬ 
mous, is no longer to be found, except 


in the extreme upper portion of the valley. 
There are several species of vultures, 
eagles, hawks, buzzards, and crows. There 
are numerous song birds. The pelican and 
the sacred ibis still wade in the waters of 
the upper Nile. Cats, dogs, fowls, sheep, 
cattle, asses, horses, and camels are the 
domestic animals. The river and lagoons 
are well stocked with fish. An ancient- 
drawing represents an Egyptian prince 
standing in a hunting boat, flinging a sort 
of boomerang at some wild ducks as they 
rise from the papyrus reeds. The papyrus 
is now very scarce, but waterfowl still 
winter in Egypt. Pigeons and poultry, in¬ 
cluding ducks, geese, and turkeys are kept 
in small yards. In winter quails from Eu¬ 
rope invade the country in large numbers. 

Flowers. The rose, jessamine, narcis¬ 
sus, oleander, chrysanthemum, morning 
glory, geranium, dahlia, sunflower, and 
violet are but a few of the flowers found 
in gardens. There are, of course, no wild 
flowers in the cultivated districts. The 
famous Egyptian lotus, or blue lily, is 
the most noticeable flower of the Nile. 

Agriculture. The water provided by 
the annual overflow of the Nile is stored 
in reservoirs and is distributed by exten¬ 
sive irrigation systems. One canal is 4,000 
years old. It is 230 feet wide on the bot¬ 
tom and carries a current 18 feet deep. 
It waters 340,000 acres. Another canal 
waters 1,000,000 acres. The soil is ex¬ 
ceedingly rich. Two or three crops are 
raised on the same field each year. Wheat, 
barley, beans, peas, clover, flax, hemp, to¬ 
bacco, sugar-cane, cotton, and maize, are 
the chief field crops. Lettuce, watermel¬ 
ons, cucumbers, onions, leeks, garlic, cel¬ 
ery, radishes, carrots, turnips, cabbages, 
tomatoes, the egg fruit, caraway, anise, red 
pepper, and many other herbs and vege¬ 
tables are raised in abundance. Grapes, 
dates, figs, apricots, peaches, oranges, lem¬ 
ons, citrons, bananas, and olives flourish. 
Indigo and madder are cultivated for dyes. 
The chief forage plant is clover. 

Population. The present population 
of Egypt is variously estimated at from 
ten to twelve millions. It is possibly a 
half greater than at any previous period in 
the history of the country. The native 





Copyright, 1900, by Underwood & Underwood, New York. 


SUEZ CANAL, PORT SAID 
Ocean Liners Taking on Beef 












































EGYPTIAN SCENES 








































EGYPT 


Egyptians have a dark complexion, but 
belong to the white race. They are chiefly 
Mohammedans, although a sect, called the 
Copts, numbering about half a million, 
clings to a form of Christianity. There 
is a large admixture of Turks, Arabs, Ar¬ 
menians, and Europeans. The mass of the 
population is intensely ignorant, and is 
poverty stricken. Efforts are being made 
to establish a school in each village. The 
prevalent language of the country is now 
Arabic. 

Government. For many years Egypt 
was nominally a Turkish possession under 
a ruler called the khedive. He was viceroy 
of the Turkish Sultan and paid an annual 
tribute of $3,492,000. Egypt, however, 
had borrowed so much money from Eng¬ 
land and the English had such heavy in¬ 
terests in Egypt that the British Govern¬ 
ment was in virtual control. British offi¬ 
cers served in the army and the khedive 
acted under instructions of the resident 
British minister. On December 17, 1914, as 
a feature of “the great war,” England de¬ 
clared a protectorate over Egypt and ended 
the rule of Turkey. The capital is Cairo. 

History. The civilization of Egypt is 
ancient. It was at one time the leading 
country in the world. When Greece was 
still a mountainous country, inhabited by 
rude shepherds, Egypt was a country of 
palaces, extensive roads, immense temples, 
and monumental structures, the remains of 
which still excite the admiration of the 
traveler. Grecian art owes much to 
Egypt. There was a close relationship as 
well between the civilization of the Eu¬ 
phrates Valley and that of the Nile. 

In early days the Egyptians must have 
been an inventive people. From their 
hieroglyphic writings, pictures on monu¬ 
ments, and other sources of information, 
we learn that, long before Europe emerged 
from savagery, the Egyptians were famil¬ 
iar with many tools, such as the saw, adz, 
and chisel. Their physicians possessed for¬ 
ceps, syringes, and implements like a ra¬ 
zor. Their artisans were familiar with the 
blowpipe and the blacksmith’s bellows. 
The use of the lever, of the balance for 
weighing, and of the siphon for convey¬ 
ing liquids, was understood. Specimens of 
11-32 


beautiful glazed pottery have been found. 
The warriors of the early Egyptian kings 
had helmets, shields, spears, maces, battle- 
axes, hatchets, and swords. They handled 
the bow skillfully. They conducted sieges 
and scaled walls by means of ladders. The 
Egyptian farmer was familiar with the 
use of the plow and hoe. He cut his grain 
with a sickle. Methods of retting flax were 
practiced. The fiber was made into 
threads and rope, and woven into cloth on 
a loom. Painting and sculpture were high¬ 
ly developed. It would be difficult to 
name an art or craft in which the Egyp¬ 
tians in their day were not leaders. The 
use of many articles regarded as particu¬ 
larly modern was not unknown to the an¬ 
cient Egyptian. We even find a hint of 
the modern safety bicycle on an ancient 
Egyptian monument. 

O, Commander of the Faithful, Egypt is a 
compound of black earth and green plants be¬ 
tween a pulverized mountain and a red sand. 
Along the valley descends a river on which the 
blessing of the Most High reposes both in the 
evening and the morning, and which rises and 
falls with the revolutions of the sun and moon. 
According to the vicissitudes of the seasons, the 
face of the country is covered with a silver wave, 
a verdant emerald, and the deep yellow of a gold¬ 
en harvest.—Report of a Moslem Commander to 
the Caliph. 

Statistics. The following statistics are 
the latest to be had from trustworthy 
sources. 


Land area, square miles. 

Nile valley and delta. 

Population.'. 

Cairo ... 

Alexandria . 

Port Said . 

Assiut . 

Damietta . 

Fayoum . 

Number of cities and provinces.... 

Members of legislative council. 

Annual expenditure . 

Salary of khedive . 

Bonded indebtedness . 

Acres under plow . 

Number of landowners . 

Corn, acres . 

Wheat, acres. 

Sugar-cane, acres . 

Exports . 

Domestic Animals— 

Horses . 

Mules . 

Asses . 


400,000 

12,013 

11 , 287,395 

654,476 

332,246 

49,884 

39,442 

29,354 

37,320 

21 

30 

$ 70 , 000,000 

$ 500,000 

$ 475 , 000,000 

5 , 614,000 

1 , 230,000 

1 , 300,000 

1 , 218,000 

41,000 

$100,000,000 

80,000 

10,000 

120,000 
























EGYPTIAN LITERATURE—ELASTICITY 


Cattle ... 350,000 

Buffaloes . 300,000 

Camels . 40,000 

Acres of cotton . 1,603,000 

Pounds of export cotton . 723,400,000 

Miles of railway owned by state .... 1,443 

Postoffice savings bank deposits 

. $1,951,000 

Elementary schools 5,000 

Pupils enrolled . 284,000 

Percentage of adult illiteracy. 94 

Number postoffices 1,279 

Letters and postcards. 24,000,000 


Egyptian Literature. See Litera¬ 
ture, Egyptian. 

Ehrenbreitstein, a-ren-brit'stin, a ma¬ 
jestic German fortress. It is situated 
on a precipitous rock 387 feet above the 
eastern bank of the Rhine. The present 
fortifications were constructed in 18lb- 
1826, at an expense of $6,000,000. The 
fortress is approached usually from Cob¬ 
lenz by a bridge of boats. The rock is pre¬ 
cipitous on three sides, and is ascended on 
the fourth by a zigzag lane, flanked by 
heavy masonry and commanded by heavy 
cannon at every angle. The fortress is con¬ 
sidered one of the strongest in the world, 
and is often called the “Gibraltar of the 
Rhine.” It accommodates 14,000 soldiers. 
The parade ground commands a magnifi¬ 
cent view of the Rhine, the Moselle, and 
the city of Coblenz. See Rhine; Coblenz; 
Moselle. 

Eiderdown Cloth, a knitted woolen 
fabric with a soft, heavy nap. It re¬ 
ceives its name from a fancied resemblance 
of this nap to eider down. The wool¬ 
en yarn used in manufacturing this cloth 
is soft and bulky. Sometimes it is backed 
with a finer cotton yarn. After knit¬ 
ting, the nap is raised by “gigging” or 
“teaseling.” Stripes and checks are pro¬ 
duced by different colored yarns. Dots 
and other figures are embroidered before 
napping by a specially constructed ma¬ 
chine. Eiderdown cloth is used for chil¬ 
dren’s coats, hoods, robes, dressing gowns, 
afghans, coverlets, etc. Eiderdown cloth 
is made single or double faced. See Nap¬ 
ping; Gigging; Double Cloth; Knit¬ 
ting. 

Eider Duck. See Duck. 

Eiffel (l'fel) Tower, or Tour Eiffel, 

a lofty iron tower erected on the exposition 


grounds of Paris in 1889. The plans 
were drawn by Gustav Eiffel, the same 
who designed the framework for Barthol¬ 
di’s statue of Liberty in New York har¬ 
bor. The Eiffel Tower is 1,000 feet high 
—the tallest structure in the world. It is 
built of iron lattice work and is exceed¬ 
ingly graceful in outline. Three elevators, 
as well as stairways with 1927 steps, lead 
to its summit. The interior affords room 
for a number of restaurants and other en¬ 
terprises. During the Paris Exposition the 
ascent was made by thousands of visitors, 
who were delighted with the extensive 
view to be enjoyed from the summit. Some 
notion of its height may be had from 
the statement that, allowing twelve arid 
one-half feet to the story, the total height 
of the tower is equivalent to that of an 
eighty story building. It was so built 
that it still stands secure. Scientific men 
regard it as worth the money and cost 
as a station for the observation of air 
density, temperature, moisture, velocity of 
wind, etc., at different heights. It well 
illustrates the expansive power of heat. It 
is eight inches taller in summer than in 
winter. A wireless telegraph station has 
been installed in the top of the tower. 
The tower serves also as a kind of sig¬ 
nal station. A system of electrical illu¬ 
mination flashes forth the hours and quar¬ 
ters. 

Elaine, e-lan'. See Idylls of the 
King. 

Eland, a large south African antelope. 
See Antelope. 

Elasticity, that property of matter by 
virtue of which a body tends to return to 
its original shape or size after the force 
producing a change in either has been re¬ 
moved. The property is most marked in 
gases, while liquids show it but little. 
Solids are irregularly and imperfectly 
elastic; some, as steel, having the property 
in a marked degree while substances like 
putty are almost wholly inelastic. The 
most common illustration of an elastic 
substance is rubber, though the mathemati¬ 
cal determination of its elasticity as the 
term is used in physics w r ould give a low 
result; for what is measured is the force 
with which it tends to return to its former 














ELBA—ELECTORAL COLLEGE 


condition. In this sense steel would be 
much more elastic than rubber. When¬ 
ever a body does not fully return to its 
original shape or volume, the limit of 
elasticity is said to have been exceeded. 
Gases have no such limit. Elasticity may 
exhibit itself as a result of either compres¬ 
sion, bending, extension, or twisting. These 
are made use of in some of our most deli¬ 
cate measuring instruments, such as weigh¬ 
ing devices and galvanometers. The fun¬ 
damental law of elasticity, known as 
Hooke’s law enunciated by Robert Hooke 
in 1675, states that within the limits of 
perfect elasticity, the strain is proportional 
to the stress, or in other words, the def¬ 
ormation varies as the force applied. 

Elba, an island in the Mediterranean. 
It lies between the northern end of Cor¬ 
sica and the mainland of Italy. It is 
about eighteen miles long and twelve miles 
wide. Its iron mines were celebrated in 
the days of the Romans, and are still 
worked. Its quarries supply a superior 
quality of marble and alum. It is a 
land of vineyards and orchards. Elba is 
noted in history. At Napoleon’s down¬ 
fall in 1814 it was a serious question of 
what to do with him. He was assigned the 
island of Elba as a residence, and also 
as an empire. It was proposed to give 
him a princely income and allow him to re¬ 
tain royal rank. The island, however, 
was entirely too small for a man of his 
ambition. He left for the coast of France 
and inaugurated the campaign which re¬ 
sulted in Waterloo and in his banishment 
to St. Helena. Elba belongs to Italy. 
Population, 25,480. 

Elbe, elb, an important river in central 
Germany. It rises in Silesia and empties in¬ 
to the North Sea. Prague, Dresden, Mag¬ 
deburg, and Hamburg are its chief cities. 
By treaty it is open to the ships of all 
nations. By means of branches and nu¬ 
merous canals it is connected with a large 
number of the cities of central Europe, in¬ 
cluding Halle, Berlin, and Leipsic. It 
is well stocked with fish. For the con¬ 
venience of tugs towing canal boats, a 
chain has been laid in the Elbe from 
Magdeburg to a point in Bohemia 293 
miles distant. The chain is picked up 


by a reversible drum, and runs lengthwise 
of the boat. When two tugs meet, the 
one going down stream relinquishes the 
chain until the other has passed. The 
dripping chain is fished up, laid on the 
drum, and the journey is continued. Over 
thirty tugs use the chain. They tow many 
barges. 

Elder, a shrub of the honeysuckle fam¬ 
ily. The flowers are small, but are borne 
in large clusters. In England a Christ¬ 
mas wine is made of elder berries. Ameri¬ 
can boys are familiar with elder for pop¬ 
guns. We have two kinds, one with red 
berries and one with black. A joint of 
either will do. Cut the wood carefully 
so as not to crack it, selecting a straight 
piece an inch in diameter and eight inches 
long. Push out the large pith and scrape 
off the outside bark. Polish up the wood 
inside and out, and make a loose fitting 
ramrod about two inches longer than the 
gun. Chew up paper and drive a wad 
through the gun almost to the farther end. 
Force a second wad after the first. The 
air between the wads will be compressed 
and will expel the first wad with a loud 
report. The second wad may now be used 
for a first wad, and so on indefinitely. 
“Like a popgun” is a proverbial expres¬ 
sion for that which makes a noise without 
producing a corresponding result. 

El Dorado, el dd-ra'do, a mythical 
country, supposed to exist somewhere in 
South America. From the accounts given 
by the Indians, the Spanish explorers long 
believed a region existed somewhere in the 
Andes where gold was so abundant that 
children played with nuggets instead of 
marbles. Many expeditions were sent out 
to search for this land of gold, but, al¬ 
though much treasure was obtained, El 
Dorado was never discovered. During the 
gold excitement in California the region 
was called the El Dorado of the West. The 
term is Spanish, meaning gilded man, re¬ 
ferring to the reputed high priest of this 
fabled region. The El Dorado myth is dis¬ 
tinctly American, but seems related in 
many respects to the story of the Golden 
Fleece and other myths of Greece. 

Electoral College, in the United 
States, a body of men intrusted with the 


ELECTORAL COMMISSION—ELECTRICITY 


selection of a president and a vice-presi¬ 
dent. The United States Constitution pro¬ 
vides that the voters of the different states 
shall choose electors, who shall in turn se¬ 
lect a president and a vice-president. It 
was the intent of the framers of the Con¬ 
stitution that these electors should ex¬ 
ercise their own judgment; but, as a matter 
of fact, they are pledged customarily to 
the support of particular candidates. Each 
state chooses as many electors as it has 
representatives and senators in Congress. 
The number cannot, therefore, fall below 
three. Nevada has three. New Jersey 
has three. New York has thirty-nine. 
Though called an electoral college, the 
term is a misnomer, for the electors never 
meet in one body. Those for each state 
meet at a place designated by the state 
legislature, usually at the capital, on the 
second Monday in January to cast their 
ballots for president and vice-president. 
They make three certified copies of the re¬ 
sult. One is deposited with the federal 
judge of the district, one is sent by mail 
to the president of the Senate, the other is 
sent to the same officer by an official 
messenger, usually one of their own num¬ 
ber. For convenience, the electoral vote 
of each state is given in the table ac¬ 
companying the article on Congress. For 
the make-up of the college, see table in 
article on the United States. See also 
President. 

Electoral Commission, a commission 
appointed by act of Congress January 26, 
1877, to pass on disputed presidential elec¬ 
tion returns from South Carolina, Louisi¬ 
ana, Florida, and Oregon, and one or two 
other states where fraud or ineligibility 
was charged. Samuel J. Tilden and 
Thomas A. Hendricks, the democratic can¬ 
didates, had a majority by popular vote. 
Hayes and Wheeler, Republicans, had a 
technical majority on the face of the 
returns. The Democrats controlled tire 
House, the Republicans, the Senate, and a 
deadlock ensued. Both sides agreed to abide 
by the decision of a committee consisting of 
five senators and five representatives and 
five justices of the supreme court, two Re¬ 
publicans and two Democrats, the four to 
choose a fifth member. The commission 


met February 1 and rose March 1. Every 
contested point was decided in favor of 
the Hayes and Wheeler electors by a parti¬ 
san vote, eight to seven, the last named 
justice, Joseph P. Bradley of New Jeisey, 
siding with the Republicans on each issue. 
See Tilden. 

Electors, in European history, a body 
of seven men entrusted with the election of 
the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. 
Charlemagne, it may be remembered, was 
the first emperor. His successors were ap¬ 
pointed in various ways, sometimes by an 
election held by a large body of representa¬ 
tive or leading nobles, sometimes by some 
clique of intriguers. In 1356 a Bohemian 
emperor, Charles IV, with the consent of 
the Diet or Imperial Parliament,'issued 
what is known in history as the Golden 
Bull. This document intrusted the selec¬ 
tion of future emperors to the three arch¬ 
bishops of Mainz or Mayence, Cologne, 
and Trier or Treves, the king of Bo¬ 
hemia, the duke of Saxony, the margrave 
of Brandenburg, and the count pala¬ 
tine of the Rhine, as a college of electors. 
Each of these seven dignitaries was known 
henceforth as an elector. When acting to¬ 
gether they formed the college of electors. 
The terms gave rise to some confusion. For 
instance, the elector of Cologne and the 
archbishop of Cologne are one and the 
same person. During the Thirty Years’ 
War, the duke of Bavaria was permitted 
to assume the title of elector. In 1692 
the ruler of Hanover was. added to the 
college, bringing the number of members 
up to nine. The college was abolished by 
Napoleon. 

Electricity, in physics, a cause the na¬ 
ture of which is as yet largely unknown. 
Under certain circumstances it produces 
heat, light, chemical action, attraction, or 
repulsion. It is in turn set in operation 
by them. The results last named are also 
called forms of electricity, so that the 
term applies not only to the cause, what¬ 
ever that may be, but to its manifestations 
as well. There is deep interest in a re¬ 
cently propounded theory that terrestrial 
electricity* like heat and light, reaches us 
from the sun; and that the difference be¬ 
tween heat and light, on the one hand, 









ELECTRICITY 


and electricity or magnetism, on the other, 
is one of wave length and frequency. Ac¬ 
cording to this theory, heat, light, elec¬ 
tricity, and magnetism are much the same. 
Shorten the wave length of heat and we 
have light; shorten the wave length of 
light and we have electricity; increase the 
wave length of electricity, that is to say, 
retard its movement and we have heat or 
light. It is difficult to reconcile all elec¬ 
trical phenomena with this theory; but it 
is fascinating, and gives hope of clearing 
up what has hitherto been considered a 
mysterious subject. Electricity has been 
discussed as though it were a fluid. If 
the modern theory should prevail, such 
terms as current and pressure would seem 
a little unfortunate. 

Up to the present time, electricity has 
been considered as of two kinds,—that ex¬ 
cited by friction and that generated by 
chemical action, or by a dynamo. The 
discovery of frictional or static electricity 
is attributed usually to Thales, who flour¬ 
ished in the sixth century B. C. He ob¬ 
served that amber rubbed by silk had the 
peculiar property of attracting bits of pith, 
paper, husk, or other light bodies. Many 
other substances, such as glass, sulphur, 
and resin, may be electrified in like man¬ 
ner. The electricity produced in the glass 
is called vitreous or positive electricity; 
while that of the silk with which it is 
rubbed is called resinous or negative. If 
a stick of sealing wax be rubbed with silk, 
however, the electricity developed in the 
silk is positive; that in the wax, negative. 
Many interesting experiments may be con¬ 
ducted with frictional electricity. 

The so-called Leyden jar consists essen¬ 
tially of two sheets of tinfoil, separated by 
a non-conducting glass. The sheets may 
be charged with opposite kinds of elec¬ 
tricity in such a way as to obtain quite a 
spark on uniting the two surfaces by a 
conductor. The Holtz machine is a de¬ 
vice for generating electricity by causing 
a disk of glass to rotate rapidly through 
a rubber. It produces a series of electric 
sparks. Ordinary lightning is due to a 
discharge of static electricity stored up in 
a cloud. The earth serves for the second 
surface. The air serves to separate them. 


Little practical use has been found for 
static electricity in the arts and sciences. 

So-called current electricity may be pro¬ 
duced in various ways. The most common 
means is that of chemical action in a 
voltaic battery. Electricity may also be 
generated by revolving a coil of wire in 
the field between the poles of a magnet, 
as in the case of the dynamo electric ma¬ 
chine. If two pieces of different metals, 
as bismuth and antimony, be connected at 
one end by a copper wire, and be soldered 
together at the other, an electrical current 
may be produced in the wire by a change 
of temperature, that is, by heating or cool¬ 
ing the soldered point. 

The effects of' electricity are numerous 
and of great importance in the industrial 
world. The electricity used in electrotyp¬ 
ing and electrolysis, in operating tele¬ 
graph lines, ocean cables, doorbells, clocks, 
and many other contrivances is developed 
usually by a battery. That used in operat¬ 
ing an electric light plant, in pro¬ 
pelling trolley cars, and in operating ma¬ 
chinery generally is derived usually from a 
dynamo,—an electric machine, which, in 
turn, is set in motion by the consump¬ 
tion of fuel or by water power. It should 
be remembered in all cases that the dy¬ 
namo and motor are unable to create elec¬ 
tricity. The motive power must in every 
case spring from the chemical action, the 
consumption of fuel, or some mechanical 
work, such as that performed by falling 
water or the turning of a crank by hand or 
horse power. One, and, in fact, the great 
advantage derived from a dynamo is the 
transmission of power without serious loss 
or inconvenience to great distances. Enor¬ 
mous dynamos at Niagara Falls, in Cali¬ 
fornia, and elsewhere are enabled to send 
power through cables to cities miles away. 
Where the work is to be done on the spot, 
as in the case of a grist mill, it is quite as 
well to connect the mill by belt with the 
shaft of a water wheel; but, when it is 
desired to do work’at a distance, the fall¬ 
ing water may be used to rotate a dynamo. 
The electricity thus generated may be 
transmitted to great distances, far beyond 
the reach of shaft and belt. Mexico now 
has the longest electrical transmission line 


ELECTRIC LIGHT BUG—ELECTRIC LIGHTING 


on record. Electricity developed by a 
mountain torrent is conveyed 95 miles to 
the capital city with a loss of but six per 
cent. The line continues 86 miles farther 
to a mining plant, 181 miles in all. A 
six-strand copper cable is suspended on 
steel towers instead of poles. The line 
cost $10,000 per mile and carries 60,000 
volts. 

Edison is of the opinion that coal should 
be converted into electricity by huge pow¬ 
erhouses situated at the mines. Coal is 
valued at about a dollar a ton at the 
mouth of the mine. Edison claims that 
steam engines, dynamos, and wire conduc¬ 
tors can convert the heat of coal into elec¬ 
trical energy and deliver it thousands of 
miles away at a fraction of the present cost 
of freight. All the work of heating and 
lighting, and the propelling of machinery 
in factories and mills, now done by coal, 
may be done by coal-generated electricity, 
thus saving the hauling and handling of 
coal and the dust and smoke now accom¬ 
panying its use. By the use of storage 
batteries, all vehicles, especially in cities, 
may be run without the aid of horses. He 
deems it quite possible to banish the horse 
stable from the city. The great objection 
to electricity for railways seems to be that 
a single break in the transmission apparatus 
may tie up a whole system. 

There is a widespread impression that 
the end of the nineteenth century wit¬ 
nessed the development of a new power. 
It is a mistake, however, to say that any 
part of the world’s work is done by elec¬ 
tricity, but rather that electricity is a con¬ 
venient means of applying power. 

Electric Light Bug, our largest bug. 
So named from its habit of dashing at 
electric lights. It is an aquatic bug, and 
is properly called the giant waterbug. It 
lives on minnows, small frogs, tadpoles, 
and the like, which it holds with its front 
legs while it sucks out the blood. The 
waterbug sticks the tip of his abdomen 
out of the water to breathe, as its breath¬ 
ing spiracles, corresponding to nostrils, 
are, insect fashion, situated along the sides 
of the last segment of the body. An in¬ 
teresting feature is the peculiar construc¬ 
tion of the front leg, the second joint of 


* 

which shuts into a groove in the upper 
joint like a blade into the handle of a 
knife. At night waterbugs often come 
up out of rivers and ponds and fly about, 
being particularly attracted by street 
lamps; but, no accident preventing, they 
are back in the water by dawn of day. 

Electric Lighting, illumination by 
means of electricity. Electric lights are of 
two sorts, the arc and the incandescent. As 
early as 1809 Sir Humphry Davy ex¬ 
hibited an arc light before the Royal In¬ 
stitute of London. He demonstrated that 
if two pieces of charcoal in a strong 
electric circuit be separated slightly, a 
brilliant glow is produced. In the modern 
application of the principle for street 
lighting, the pieces of charcoal are re¬ 
placed by sticks of carbon. These are 
about ten inches in length, and vary in 
diameter from one-half to five-eighths of 
an inch. They are made of petroleum 
coke or ordinary gas coke, which is first 
ground thoroughly and mixed with a sort 
of paste. An automatic device is relied 
upon to hold the points of the carbon at 
the right distance apart and to bring them 
together at regular intervals. As these 
carbons waste away they are replaced by 
fresh ones. 

The incandescent lamp was not brought 
to perfection until about 1879, when 
Thomas A. Edison devised the lamp now 
used in incandescent lighting. It con¬ 
sists essentially of a small carbon filament, 
prepared from a bamboo fiber, looped in 
a vacuum within a glass bulb. The fila¬ 
ment is so slender that it offers great re¬ 
sistance to the passage of the electric cur¬ 
rent and converts the electricity into light. 
The vacuum is designed merely to prevent 
combustion. Otherwise the carbon of the 
filament and the oxygen of the air would 
unite; that is to say, the filament would 
burn out instantly. The strength of an in¬ 
candescent lamp is expressed usually by 
comparing it with the light given by a 
standard candle. A very ordinary lamp 
gives sixteen times as much light as the 
standard candle. Inasmuch as there is no 
consumption, the incandescent lamp nei¬ 
ther consumes nor pollutes the air. It re¬ 
quires no cleaning, produces very little 













ELECTRO-MAGNET—ELECTROLYSIS 


heat and is more quickly available than 
any other kind of lighting known. The 
light is also steadier than that given by a 
candle, by gas, or by an oil lamp, and is 
on that account to be preferred by the 
reader. 

Although ideal in the respects mention¬ 
ed above, it must still be admitted that elec¬ 
tric lighting is a wasteful method. Less than 
two per cent of the energy of coal con¬ 
sumed in the lighting plant reaches the 
consumer in the form of light. As stated, 
the earliest filament was a bamboo fiber. 
Other materials, particularly filaments of 
tungsten, are now in favor. 

Electro-magnet, a temporary magnet 
made by a current of electricity. If a 
wire carrying an electric current be wound 
about a rod of soft iron the core becomes 
a magnet. If the current be cut off, or if 
the iron be removed, the latter ceases to 
be a magnet. In physics, the wire so 
. wrapped is called a helix, the iron rod is 
called the core, and, so long as the core is 
magnetized, it is an electro-magnet. Any 
body attracted by a magnet is called its 
load. Wrap the wire of an electric lamp 
around a soft nail, turn on the current, 
and the nail becomes a magnet. Turn 
off the current, and the nail loses its mag¬ 
netism. By turning the current off and on, 
the electro-magnet may be made and un¬ 
made at will. When a telegraph oper¬ 
ator works the lever of his key, he is mak¬ 
ing and unmaking the electro-magnet of 
the receiving' instrument miles and even 
thousands of miles away. The rapid click¬ 
ing indicates that the magnet is seizing and 
releasing its load. 

A huge magnet, possibly shaped like a 
cheese, and often no larger than a wagon 
wheel, suspended from the arm of a crane 
and controlled by a powerful electric cur¬ 
rent, is capable of doing marvels. Lowered 
over a pile of scrap iron, such a magnet 
picks up metal large and small,—an iron 
filing or a ton casting, it is all the same to 
the magnet. The crane swings, the load 
is dropped, and the magnet swings back 
for another load. Foundries find that in 
this way they can handle scrap iron .at a 
fraction of the former cost. Pig iron, 
too,—bars under which a man staggered, 


—are handled like matches. A fifty-ton 
car of pig iron can be unloaded in half 
an hour. 

By arranging an overhead track for the 
hangings to travel on, the lifting magnet 
is used to carry kegs of nails. The con¬ 
trivance trundles to and fro, lifts a doz¬ 
en kegs of nails, carries them to their des¬ 
tination, and drops them in place. All 
the operator has to do is push a lever 
when the load is in place to be dropped. 
The lift magnet is a cheerful worker. It 
will drop a huge bar of iron into the 
hottest flame, or pull it out again without 
a word of complaint. It is never tired, 
never burns its fingers. A fifteen ton 
burglar-proof steel safe is a hard article 
to get hold of,—a hard article to handle. 
It is impossible to get men enough around 
it even to budge it, but the magnet lifts 
it and carries it away without an apparent 
effort. Huge steel ship plates forty feet 
long are carried to the frame and are held 
in place until they are riveted safely. The 
uses of the lift-magnet are so manifold, 
and its use does away with so much grimy, 
exhausting labor, that large machine 
shops, foundries, shipyards, and whole¬ 
sale hardware stores are not considered up 
to date without electrical lift-magnets. 

The electro-magnet is used for small 
articles as well. Bits of metal too small 
for the fingers may be held against a 
polishing wheel. In the manufacture of 
small metal articles like screws and pins, 
where it is desirable to secure speed and 
automatic accuracy without employing 
hand labor, there are a thousand applica¬ 
tions of the electro-magnet., 

Electrolysis, the breaking asunder of 
a chemical compound by the passage of an 
electric current through it. The terminals 
of the battery or dynamo are inserted in 
the solution known as an electrolyte, where¬ 
upon the acid part of the compound, or 
anion is liberated at the anode, where the 
current is said to enter, while the alkaline 
ion, or cathion, is set free at the cathode, 
where the current is said to pass out. This 
nomenclature is due to Faraday. A famil¬ 
iar example of electrolysis is the decom¬ 
position of aciduated water into its com¬ 
ponent gases, hydrogen and oxygen. 


ELECTROMOTIVE FORCE—ELEPHANT 


Electrolysis has come to be of the great¬ 
est practical importance. Since the amount 
of chemical action per second is proportion¬ 
al to the current strength, most accurate 
measurements of current may be made by 
chemical decomposition. Electroplating is 
an electrolytic process, as is also electrotyp¬ 
ing. In the purification of metals, charg¬ 
ing storage batteries, and in the manufac¬ 
ture of many chemicals, electrolysis is 
employed. 

Electromotive Force, literally, that 
force which causes electricity to move, or 
in other words, the immediate cause of an 
electricity current. It is sometimes used 
as equivalent to difference of potential. 
As abbreviated to E. M. F., it is employed 
largely in physics and in electrical cal¬ 
culations. The commercial unit is the volt 
which practically equals the electromotive 
force of a Daniell cell. See Potential. 

Electrotype, a metal cast of type or of 
an engraving made by an electrolytic proc¬ 
ess. An impression of that which is to 
be copied is made in wax or some similar 
material, sprinkled with graphite to make 
it a conductor, and attached to the negative 
terminal in a copper solution. After the 
current has passed for an hour or so, the 
cast is removed from the electrolyte, the 
thin film of metal removed from the mold 
and filled with lead. This is planed down 
parallel to the face and mounted on a 
wooden block to give it the proper thickness. 
Electrotypes are now generally used in 
printing books, newspapers, and magazines, 
both for pages of type and for the illus¬ 
trations, instead of using the type or en¬ 
gravings themselves. 

Elegy, a variety of lyric poetry which 
is expressive of grief. The elegy is called 
forth usually by the death of some in¬ 
dividual ; but serious reflection upon mor¬ 
tality is also the theme of elegies. Gray’s 
Elegy in a Country Churchyard, Milton’s 
Lycidas, Shelley’s Adonais, and Tenny¬ 
son’s In Memoriam are the most noted ele¬ 
gies in the English language. See Po¬ 
etry. 

Elements. See Chemistry. 

Elephant, the largest land animal now 
living. A well grown male is from eight 
to ten feet high at the shoulder and at¬ 


tains a weight of 10,000 lbs. The hide is 
thick, wrinkled, and sparsely covered with 
hair, placing the elephant among the thick- 
skinned animals, to which the rhinoceros, 
the hippopotamus, and the pig also be¬ 
long. The general color is bluish or slaty 
gray. To support so heavy a body the ele¬ 
phant is provided with colossal straight 
legs, to which the name columnar, from 
their resemblance to the columns of a tem¬ 
ple, is sometimes applied. The elephant 
not infrequently sleeps leaning against a 
tree or a cliff, as though slumber had over¬ 
taken it while scratching itself; but it 
lies down with the utmost ease, sprawling 
with its legs comfortably extended for¬ 
ward and backward. Despite its great 
weight it rises easily. Its gait is a shuffling 
walk, which may be increased in speed to 
very nearly that of a horse, but cannot be 
changed into either a trot or a canter. 
Even in its lumbering charge upon a luck¬ 
less hunter it performs a double-quick 
shuffle. The ease with which the elephant 
sprawls or allows its body to sink to the 
ground is of the utmost advantage in 
ascending or descending mountains, in 
which, despite its heavy bulk, it quite ex¬ 
cels the horse in speed, security of foot, and 
in ability to climb where the ascent is so 
steep that a horse remaining erect on its 
legs, would fall backward. The skeleton 
shows that each foot is provided with five 
toes, but the entire foot is contained in 
a flexible, muscular, tough-soled sack, 
through the edge of which five horny, claw¬ 
like hoofs project slightly. The flat foot 
makes a track as large as a half-bushel 
measure. 

The neck is very short and stiff. The 
head is large, affording broad surfaces for 
the attachment of the muscles of the trunk. 
The forehead is broad and benevolent in 
appearance, corresponding to the ele¬ 
phant’s well founded reputation for in¬ 
telligence; but, if the truth be told, the 
brain capacity within is actually quite 
small. The skull is very thick, and is 
honeycombed with air passages reducing 
its weight. 

The most peculiar feature of an ele¬ 
phant is its nose or trunk, the tip of which, 
containing the nostrils, is extended eight 




ELEPHANT 


feet, easily touching the ground when the 
animal is standing erect. The trunk is 
an exceedingly strong, lithe, tough, sensi¬ 
tive organ, composed, anatomists say, of 
40,000 distinct muscles of varying size 
and delicacy. The uses of the trunk are 
various. With this instrument the ele¬ 
phant is able to grasp leaves and twigs, 
otherwise above its reach, and to lift food 
from the ground and tuck it into its mouth. 
Its customary food consists of grasses and 
rice, which it pulls with its trunk and 
cleans from dirt by flogging the roots 
against its front legs. Sugar-cane is its 
delight, although the elephant of the men¬ 
agerie must be content with about 200 
pounds of hay and carrots. In drinking, 
the elephant Alls its trunk and discharges 
the contents by blowing into its mouth. By 
using its trunk as a trumpet the elephant 
makes itself heard for miles. In its 
native jungle the elephant has a keen 
scent for food or enemies. Its large, pen¬ 
dulous, lopsided ears, shaped like the leaf 
of a begonia, catch the slightest sound. Its 
natural enemy is the tiger, which it seizes 
with its trunk and flings against a tree or 
tramples under foot in a fine rage. It is 
said that the mere sight of a dead tiger 
throws an elephant into a fury. Two in¬ 
cisors of the upper jaw are prolonged al¬ 
most directly forward into huge tusks 
which sometimes attain a weight of 150 

or 200 pounds each. 

The elephant has long been domesti¬ 
cated. It was employed by the Carthagin¬ 
ians, as may be remembered, in their wars, 
and is used at the present time by the na¬ 
tives of India chiefly in conveying and 
piling lumber. An elephant is able to 
balance a timber of several hundred 
pounds’ weight on its tusks and guide it 
through a forest path to the water’s edge. 
When employed in a lumber yard it shows 
great intelligence. It will lift and carry 
heavy timbers, pilirrg them up. with ex¬ 
actness for hours at a time without the 
least suggestion. The magnates of India 
ride on the elephant’s back in a sort o 
box or saddle called a howdah. The driv¬ 
er or mahout sits astride the elephant’s 
neck, guiding its movements with his voice 

and a sharp gad. 


Elephants roam in herds under the guid¬ 
ance of an old male. They prefer a 
mountainous or at least rough forest coun¬ 
try, and are still found in Africa, south 
of the Sahara, and in India south of the 
Himalayas. As stated, their food is en¬ 
tirely vegetable. They are exceedingly fond 
of playing in water, which they spout over 
themselves and companions with extreme 
delight. The elephant is a strong swim¬ 
mer, not infrequently sinking so that only 
the tip of its uplifted trunk is visible 
above the surface. It is able to reg¬ 
ulate its depth by inhaling or expelling air. 

The elephant lives to an age of 100 or, 
it is said, even 200 years. The young ele¬ 
phant has her first calf at fifteen, or some 
say thirty years of age. A single calf is 
brought forth every six years. In suckling 
the young stands or sits directly in front 
of the mother who fondles it most affec¬ 
tionately with her trunk. Young are sel¬ 
dom produced in captivity, nor do they 
seem to thrive away from their native jun¬ 
gles. 

The laboring elephants of India are re¬ 
cruited from the wild herds. Captives are 
taken in different ways. Sometimes two 
or three hunters lay cables knotted into 
snares in the path of a herd. When they 
have succeeded in tying the hind legs of an 
elephant to a tree they camp with him 
for weeks if need be. After his rage has 
been subdued by hunger and severe punish¬ 
ment, kinder measures are resorted to, and 
sweet cane is offered the prisoner as a 
reward for every sign of good behavior, 
until finally they are able to lead their cap¬ 
tive home thoroughly subjugated. Some¬ 
times tame female elephants are taken into 
the jungle. While they attract the at¬ 
tention of a wild male, and fondle him 
with their trunks, as they have been taught 
to do, the hunters tie his hind legs together 
and carry cables to adjoining trees. The 
thoroughly enraged prisoner 'is then treated 
as above. Sometimes herds are captured 
by driving them into enormous strong 
stockades made of the trunks of trees set 
upright in the earth and lashed together. 
The females are restored to liberty. From 
these accounts one gets an idea that the 
elephants of India are only partially wild. 


ELEVATOR 


Menagerie elephants are obtained chief¬ 
ly from dealers in the city of Hamburg. 
A good specimen is worth $1,250 to $2,500 
on board ship at that port. Save under 
rare circumstances, the elephant, when 
once tamed, is affectionate and kindly, be¬ 
coming very much attached to its driver, 
and permitting the caresses of children 
with evident satisfaction. It is said that 
if a child falls asleep in the path of an 
elephant carrying timbers, it will step over 
the little body, lifting each foot with the 
utmost care. 

For some account of extinct elephants 
well adapted to living in an Arctic climate, 
the reader is referred to the article on 
the Mammoth. See also Mastodon ; 
Hippopotamus; Rhinoceros; Ivory; 
Teak; Siam. 

Elevator, in agricultural countries, a 
building used for handling grain. An ele¬ 
vator differs from a warehouse or a gran¬ 
ary in that it has special facilities for 
obviating labor. First of all are the ele¬ 
vators to which farmers draw their grain. 
In the Red River Valley, for instance, 
grain is hauled in bulk in wagon boxes 
with high sides. The wagon is driven 
under shelter upon a balanced platform. 
The platform tilts on a pivot, lowering 
the rear end of the wagon; the tail board 
of the wagon box is opened, and the wheat 
or other grain slides out and down into 
a pit. Tin cups or buckets running on an 
endless belt, driven usually by a gasoline 
engine, scoop up the grain and carry it aloft 
into any one of many bins. These receiv¬ 
ing elevators stand usually on a spur track 
for the accommodation of freight cars. 
Grain is loaded into the cars, running by 
its own weight through spouts. 

State laws authorize the erection of ele¬ 
vators along suitable sidetracks, and re¬ 
quire railways to provide proper car ser¬ 
vice. Large grain buyers erect a series of 
elevators, one at a station, for the entire 
length of a railway system. Competing 
buyers put up competing lines of ele¬ 
vators. Not infrequently grain raisers 
combine to build a farmers’ elevator to 
handle and sell their own grain and save 
the middleman’s profit. A town of 1,000 
people may have a dozen elevators. Al¬ 



together they loom conspicuously against 
the horizon. They are the skyscrapers of 
the prairie town. 

Mammoth elevators are built at ter¬ 
minal points. An elevator with a storage 
capacity of 1,000,000 bushels excites no re¬ 
mark. Ordinarily a terminal elevator 
handles but one article, as wheat, oats, bar¬ 
ley, corn, timothy seed, clover, flax, etc. 
There are facilities for fanning and for 
sifting and for drying and for mixing. Cer¬ 
tain elevators, as those at Kasota, Minne¬ 
sota, make a specialty of sending wheat in 
showers through a blast of sulphur vapor, 
this, not only to destroy smut, but to 
bleach the kernels and impart a bright, 
marketable color. Ninety cars a day may 
be treated. 

The American elevator originated at 
Buffalo, New York,—a meeting place of 
lake, railway, and canal transportation. 
The work of transferring grain in bags 
was not only laborious, but it was slow 
and expensive. The building of elevators 
is a business in itself. They must be able 
to withstand enormous bursting pressure. 
When lumber was less expensive the outer 
walls of the large elevators were built of 
heavy plank laid flat and spiked down, 
one on the other, to a height of perhaps 
a hundred feet. The whole was covered 
oftentimes with iron sheeting to keep out 
rain and ward off sparks from passing lo¬ 
comotives. The walls were tied together 
by partitions and long iron rods. The in¬ 
creasing cost of wooden construction and 
immense losses from fire have led to the 
use of concrete, reinforced by steel bars. 
With a change of material has come a 
change of shape also. The rectangular 
form has given way to the circular,. 

The following table showing the number 
of elevators and their storage capacity in 
bushels for the more important grain cen¬ 
ters is taken from the Minneapolis Journal 
(1909) : 


Chicago . 

79 

61,325,000 

Minneapolis . 

51 

42,240,000 

Duluth-Superior . 

24 

30,175,000 

Buffalo . 

28 

24,190,000 

Fort William & Port Arthur.. 

# . 

28,490,000 

New York . 

18 

13,230,000 

Kansas City . 

24 

9,780,000 

St. Louis . 

33 

9,375,000 











ELF—ELIJAH 


Baltimore . . 


7 cn aaa 

Milwaukee . . 


A 2 £ n AAA 

New Orleans . . . 


I jU jUjUUU 

a aaa 

Montreal . . 


4,125,000 

7 caa nnn 

Galveston . . . 


Detroit . 


o,oUU,ULMJ 
7 c 9 c nnn 

Philadelphia .... 


J jUliU 

7 £ cn nnr> 

Newport News. 

Boston . 


d j J J UjvUv 

2,650,000 
? non non 

Cincinnati . 


1,750,000 


Elf. See Fairy. 

Elgin, a city in Kane County, Illinois, 
thirty-six miles northwest of Chicago, lo¬ 
cated on both sides of the Fox River. Its 
extensive watch-works have made it known 
everywhere; in them are employed 3,000 
persons, and over 1,800 watches are manu¬ 
factured daily. The city has also a large 
dairy business, carriage and shoe factories, 
packing-houses, cotton mills, manufactories 
of farming implements, soap, etc. Located 
here are a Catholic seminary, a state hospi¬ 
tal for the insane, a large library, and other 
important buildings. In 1910 its popula¬ 
tion was 25,976. 

Elgin (el'jm) Marbles, a collection 
of sculpture originally adorning the Par¬ 
thenon at Athens. While ambassador at 
Constantinople from 1799 to 1802, Thom¬ 
as Bruce, the seventh earl of Elgin, ob¬ 
tained permission from the Turkish gov¬ 
ernment to take any stones from Athens 
“that might appear interesting to him.” 
Athens, it must be remembered, was at 
this date a tumble-down city sheltering 
a village of wretched peasants and herds¬ 
men. Lord Elgin expended a fortune of 
about $350,000 in making excavations, and 
in removing and transporting to England 
the treasures of Phidias, the great sculptor. 
He secured in this way the greater part of 
the frieze and the relics of two gable ends 
of the Parthenon as well as a number of 
statues and capitals. The English govern¬ 
ment returned him about half the sum. 
These remains of ancient art, known as 
the Elgin Marbles, are now placed in 
the Elgin room of the British Museum. 
Some of them are much chipped and. in¬ 
jured; others are nearly perfect.' One 
frieze, composed, of course, of many sepa¬ 
rate slabs, is about 175 yards long. The El¬ 
gin Marbles are regarded as the choicest 
specimens of ancient art in existence. Could 
it have been foreseen that Athens would 


so soon become the capital of an inde¬ 
pendent country, without doubt Lord El¬ 
gin would have refrained from helping 
himself to these treasures. It may be 
said in defense, however, that they were 
preserved in this way from the partial de¬ 
struction which overtook the Parthenon 
during the subsequent war for Grecian in¬ 
dependence. They have been accessible to 
the scholars of the world, and have been 
well cared for. It is just possible that, as 
facilities for traveling increase and the de¬ 
sire of mankind rises to see them in their 
original position, they may be restored at 
some future time to the Parthenon. See 
Parthenon ; Aeginetan Marbles ; 
Sculpture. 

Elijah, a great Hebrew prophet, whose 
story is one of the most interesting of Old 
Testament narratives. The name Elijah 
means Whose God is Jehovah. About 929 
B. C., in the reign of Ahab, this prophet 
appears suddenly upon the scene, burning 
with zeal for what he believes to be his 
mission, the winning back to God of the 
Israelites, who, through the influence of 
Ahab’s wife Jezebel, have become idolaters. 
Elijah’s faith in God is boundless—he 
stops at no obstacle. Prophesying a famine, 
which ensues, he leaves Ahab, and is him¬ 
self fed by ravens at a brookside and later 
by the widow of Zarephath, whose hand¬ 
ful of “meal wasted not, neither did the 
cruse of oil fail” while the prophet re¬ 
mained with her. Elijah raises the wid¬ 
ow’s son from death, and the three years 
of famine being completed, returns to 
Ahab. Finding that the monarch is still 
pursuing his wicked course despite God’s 
displeasure evidenced by the famine, 
Elijah conceives the idea of proving be¬ 
fore the eyes of all that the Lord is more 
powerful than the heathen Baal. He chal¬ 
lenges the prophets of Baal to demonstrate 
the power of their god. The four hundred 
and fifty heathen priests build their altars, 
prepare their sacrifices and cry aloud from 
morning until evening for fire to consume 
their offerings, but no fire appears, neither 
is there voice, nor any answer. At evening 
Elijah has his sacrifice wet until the water 
runs around the altar and fills a trench 
“as great as would contain two measures 












of seed”; he prays, “Let it be known this 
day Thou art God in Israel,” then the 
“fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the 
burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the 
stones, and the dust, and licked up the 
water that was in the trench.” The peo¬ 
ple fall upon their faces to acknowledge 
that “the Lord, He is God,” and Baal’s 
prophets are slain. Then, for the drouth 
is not yet over, Elijah prays for rain and 
the rain comes. 

Evidently the prophet believed at this 
point that his mission was accomplished, 
for when Jezebel, learning that the prophets 
of Baal had been slain, threatened him 
with death, he was seemingly overwhelmed 
and fled into the wilderness praying that 
he might die. He had lost faith, not in 
God, but in himself, and in his mission. 
“I am not better than my fathers,” he 
exclaimed. But instead of death, food ap¬ 
peared and Elijah ate and slept. There 
followed a most impressive spiritual experi¬ 
ence. As he stood on Mount Horeb a 
“strong wind rent the mountains,” but 
Elijah felt that “the Lord was not in the 
wind; and after the wind an earthquake, 
but the Lord was not in the earthquake; 
and after the earthquake a fire, but the 
Lord was not in the fire; and after the 
fire a still, small voice.” Then Elijah 
“wrapped his face in his mantle” for he 
knew it was the Lord. The voice spake 
no word of comfort or of censure, only 
a command for the next duty. But it is 
evident that Elijah learned from it that 
God’s revelations are spiritual and not ma¬ 
terial, and that the prophet has but to 
obey. There is no further evidence of dis¬ 
couragement or doubt on Elijah’s part. 
He obeys the commands of the “still, small 
voice,” and at last after anointing Elisha 
and training him as his successor, is taken 
up “by a whirlwind into heaven.” 

Eliot, Charles William (1834-), a 
president of Harvard College. He was a 
native of Boston. He was graduated at 
Harvard in 1853. He remained in the 
college as a tutor in mathematics. In 1858 
he was made assistant professor of mathe¬ 
matics and chemistry. The years 1863-5 
he spent in European universities. In 
1865 he was elected professor of analyt¬ 


ical chemistry in the Massachusetts Insti¬ 
tute of Technology. In 1869 he was elec¬ 
ted president of Harvard, a position he 
held until 1908. President Eliot’s ad¬ 
ministration of Harvard was marked by 
intelligence and liberality. Among the 
innovations made were the removal of Lat¬ 
in and Greek from the list of required 
studies, the emphasis of modern lan¬ 
guages, the expansion of laboratory meth¬ 
ods, and a wide choice in the selection of 
subjects in all years of the college course. 

In 1909 President Taft offered Dr. El¬ 
iot the position of ambassador to the 
Court of St. James (London), but he de¬ 
clined on the score that his private means 
would not enable him to maintain the dig¬ 
nity of the office fittingly, as the rent of a 
house deemed suitable is more than the 
salary of an ambassador. 

President Eliot was a forceful writer 
on educational topics. Among the earlier 
articles to arrest attention were the New 
Education in Atlantic Monthly for 1869; 
Wise and Unwise Economy in Schools, 
Atlantic Monthly, 1875 ; The Elective 
System in Our Continent, 1882; What is 
a Liberal Education? Century, 1884. A 
number of his best educational papers 
were published in a volume bearing the 
title of Educational Reform. 

The attitude of President Eliot toward 
college and school may be seen in the 
following passage chosen from the epoch- 
making Report of the Committee of Ten 
made in 1893. This committee was ap¬ 
pointed by the National Educational As¬ 
sociation, President Eliot, chairman. It 
is understood that the words are those of 
the chairman: 

The secondary schools of the United States, 
taken as a whole, do not exist for the purpose 
of preparing boys and girls for colleges. Only 
an insignificant percentage of the graduates of 
these schools go to colleges or scientific schools. 
Their main function is to prepare for the duties 
of life that small proportion of all the children 
of the country—a proportion small in numbers, 
but very important to the welfare of the nation— 
who show themselves able to profit by an edu¬ 
cation prolonged to the eighteenth year, and 
whose parents are able to support them while 
they remain so long at school. ... A sec¬ 
ondary-school programme intended for national 
use must therefore be made for those children 
whose education is not to be pursued beyond the 



ELIOT—ELIZABETH 


high school. The preparation of a few pupils for 
college or scientific school should in the ordinary 
secondary school be the incidental, and not the 
principal, object. At the same time, it is obvious¬ 
ly desirable that the colleges and scientific schools 
should be accessible to all boys and girls who 
have completed creditably the secondary-school 
course. ... In order that any successful grad¬ 
uate of a good secondary school should be free 
to present himself at the gates of the college 
or scientific school of his choice, it is necessary 
that the colleges and scientific schools of the 
country should accept for admission to appro¬ 
priate courses of their instruction the attain¬ 
ments of any youth who has passed creditably 
through a good secondary-school course, no mat¬ 
ter to what group of subjects he may have 
mainly devoted himself in the secondary school. 


King Log has made room for King Stork. 
Mr. Eliot makes the corporation meet twice a 
month instead of once. He comes to the meet¬ 
ing of every faculty, ours among the rest, and 
keeps us up to eleven and twelve o’clock at 
night discussing new arrangements. He shows 
an extraordinary knowledge of all that relates 
to every department of the university, and pre¬ 
sides with an aplomb, a quiet, imperturbable, 
serious good-humor, that it is impossible not to 
admire. We are, some of us, disposed to think 
him a little too much in a hurry with some of 
his innovations, and take care to let the corpora¬ 
tion know it. “How is it, I should like to ask,” 
said one of our number the other day, “that 
this faculty has gone on for eighty years man¬ 
aging its own affairs and doing it well—for the 
medical school is the most flourishing depart¬ 
ment connected with the college—how is it that 
we have been going on so well in the same 
orderly path for eighty years, and now, within 
three or four months, it is proposed to change 
all our modes of carrying on the school? It 
seems very extraordinary, and I should like to 
know how it happens.” “I can answer Dr. 

-’s question very easily,” said the bland, 

grave young man : “There is a new president.”— 
Oliver Wendell Holmes to John Morley, April 
3, 1870. 

Eliot, George. See Cross, Mrs. Mary 
Ann Evans. 

Eliot, John (1604-1690), the apostle 
to the Indians of North America. He was 
educated at the University of Cambridge, 
England. He emigrated to Massachusetts 
Bay with the family of Rev. Thomas 
Hooker. He became interested in the 
Massachusetts Indians and set himself at 
work to learn their language, residing, 
for the purpose, among them. He wrote 
a catechism for their use, the first book 
ever published in an Indian language. No 
copy of it exists. He translated the Bible 


into the Indian language. It was printed 
at Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was the 
first Bible printed in America. Eliot’s 
Bible, as it is now called, is a rare book 
and fetches almost any price. Writer and 
readers have passed away. It is said that 
no one now living can read more than the 
title page. Eliot was a man of simple 
habits and unassuming manners. He lived 
to the age of eighty-six. John Eliot, a 
grandson of the former, was the pastor 
of Killingworth, Connecticut. He wrote 
a collection of essays upon Field Industry, 
the first volume of agricultural writing 
published in America. See Puritans. 

Elissa. See Dido. 

Elixir, e-liks'er, in alchemy, a solid 
substance believed to have the property of 
changing the common metals into silver or 
gold. We read of two elixirs. The great 
elixir was also called the red tincture and 
the philosopher’s stone. A little of it 
shaken into a quantity of melted silver, 
lead, or other base metal was reputed to 
turn the entire mass into gold. A belief in 
this philosopher’s stone was at one time 
very general, but no writer appears to 
have been familiar with its exact appear¬ 
ance. A minute dose was supposed also to 
prolong life and restore youth. In this 
connection, it was called the elixir of life. 
The lesser elixir or white tincture was 
reputed to have the power of turning base 
metals into silver. Much time and money 
were expended in searching for these elix¬ 
irs. The term elixir is not altogether ob¬ 
solete today in pharmacy, although the 
term, tincture, has taken its place largely. 
An elixir of today is a solution of bitter 
and aromatic vegetable substances in 
spirits of wine (alcohol). Elixir of vitri¬ 
ol is composed of cinnamon, ginger, alcho- 
hol, and a small quantity of oil of vitriol. 
See Chemistry; Medicine. 

Elizabeth (153.3-1603), queen of Eng¬ 
land. She was born at Greenwich Sep¬ 
tember 7, 1533, and died at Richmond 
March 24, 1603. Her father was the 
much-married Henry VIII; her mother, 
Anne Boleyn, was his second wife. Eliza¬ 
beth was well taught, chiefly by the cele¬ 
brated Roger Ascham. She was an apt 
student of Latin and Greek. 




ELIZABETH 


Henry’s successor, Edward VI, main¬ 
tained the Episcopal church. At the death 
of Edward, however, Mary, known in Prot¬ 
estant annals as Bloody Mary, rees¬ 
tablished the Roman Catholic religion. 
Her advisers brought many Protestant 
leaders to the block, and authorized per¬ 
secutions, even burning at the stake, on ac¬ 
count of religious belief. Elizabeth was a 
Protestant at heart, but she supported 
Mary’s accession to the throne. She saved 
herself much annoyance, and possibly 
saved her life, by apparent conformity to 
the religious views of her sister. 

Elizabeth no sooner ascended the 
throne, however, an event which occurred 
in 1558, than she took immediate measures 
to restore the Church of England to its 
former position of authority. The Epis¬ 
copal organization and form of worship 
established in her reign have continued 
practically without change to the present 
time. Nevertheless, the queen was far 
from tolerant. Her affections were rooted 
in the Episcopal church, of which, as sov¬ 
ereign, she was the supreme head. The 
Catholics were, of course, very much dis¬ 
satisfied because the authority of the pope 
had been denied. At the other extreme 
were many people who were equally dis¬ 
satisfied because the Church of England 
did not, in their opinion, go far enough. 
Many of them had resided abroad under 
the influence of Calvin, Luther, and other 
reformers. They regarded the Church of 
England as entirely too papistical. They 
desired a “purer form of worship,” and 
became known as Puritans. Elizabeth dis¬ 
liked Catholics and Puritans. She per¬ 
secuted both, and both of these religious 
bodies hated her most cordially. As a 
matter of state policy she favored the 
Huguenots in France and the Protestant 
party in the Netherlands. v She became the 
recognized head of European Protestantism. 

Her foreign policy was strong. It was 
her good fortune to have for prime min¬ 
ister and confidential adviser William Ce¬ 
cil, afterward Lord Burleigh, who had 
served under Edward VI. The exploits 
of Sir Philip Sydney, Sir Francis Drake, 
Captain John Hawkins, Sir Walter Ra¬ 
leigh, and Admiral Lord Howard, and 


the destruction of the Spanish Armada 
belong to this period. England became 
the leading maritime power of the world. 

During Elizabeth’s reign the British 
East India Company commenced opera¬ 
tions, and the foundation of the British 
empire in the New World was laid. The 
first English colony in America was 
founded on Roanoke Island by Sir Walter 
Raleigh, one of Elizabeth’s courtiers. Vir¬ 
ginia was named in honor of Elizabeth, 
the Virgin Queen. Owing to the large 
number of eminent writers, her reign is 
known as the Elizabethan Period of Eng¬ 
lish Literature. William Shakespeare, 
Edmund Spenser, and Francis Bacon are 
the great names of this period. 

Elizabeth was a woman of ability and 
undoubted patriotism. She was ambitious 
and fond of power. Though considered 
cold-hearted, she had many suitors. A 
desire to rule uncontrolled is given as the 
most probable reason for not marrying. 
Although arbitrary by nature, she had the 
good judgment to be guided by the wishes 
of Parliament. wShe was a handsome, vain 
woman, untruthful, far from staunch and 
loyal to her friends, arbitrary and even 
despotic in her little court circle; but she 
had the strength of character to avoid 
licentiousness and to work for the good 
of her people. Many oppressive laws 
were' repealed, many obnoxious monopolies 
were abolished. During her reign a great 
improvement took place in the condition 
of the common people. Schools and col¬ 
leges were encouraged. Manufactures were 
built up; the people were relieved from 
burdensome taxes; comfortable houses 
took the place of hovels; floors of dirt 
and beds of straw became less common. 
Her treatment of the unfortunate Mary, 
Queen of Scots, is described elsewhere. 
On the whole she deserves -the popular 
name accorded her of “Good Queen Bess.” 
The following tribute from Shakespeare’s 
play of King Henry VIII is not unde¬ 
served : 

She shall be loved and feared: her own shall 
bless her; 

Her foes shake like a field of beaten corn, 

And hang their heads with sorrow; good grows 
with her. 

In her days every man shall eat in safety 





ELIZABETH 


lender his own vine what he plants; and sing 
The merry songs of peace to all his neighbors. 

The dress worn at Elizabeth’s court was 
peculiar in many respects. It was very 
showy, being much trimmed with silk, em¬ 
broidery, and jewels. The broad Eliza¬ 
bethan ruff, worn by both men and women, 
was a conspicuous feature of the dress of 
the times. Men wore short breeches and 
padded stockings. Their coats were often 
slashed, and were made of brilliant col¬ 
ors. The hats were tall and were adorned 
with great plumes. Rich velvet capes 
were also worn. The fashions of the wom¬ 
en were equally extravagant. Enormous 
hoops for extending the skirts and long 
pointed bodices were much worn. Eliza¬ 
beth herself is said to have had 3,000 
dresses. In spite of her strength as a 
sovereign, Elizabeth had many feminine 
weaknesses. She affected the dress and 
manners of a coquette to the day of her 
death, and expected her attendants to heap 
flattery upon her. They compared her to 
Venus and Diana in fulsome language that 
would be offensive at the present day. A 
German who visited her court when she 
was sixty-five years of age is quoted by the 
Britannica as follows: 

She appeared stately and majestic; her face 
oblong, fair, but wrinkled; her eyes small, yet 
black and pleasant; her nose a little hooked, her 
lips narrow, her teeth black, her hands slender 
and her fingers long (there was a special beauty 
in her delicate white hands, and in her audiences 
she took care not to hide them). She had 
pearls with rich drops in her ears, wore false 
red hair, had a small crown on her head, her 
bosom uncovered, her dress white silk, bordered 
with pearls of the size of beans, a collar of gold 
and jewels; and thus arrayed, Elizabeth passed 
along, smiling graciously on the spectators, who 
fell down on their knees as she approached; 
while a marchioness bore up her train, a bevy 
of ladies followed her dressed in white, and she 
was guarded on each side by fifty gentlemen 
pensioners carrying gilt battle-axes. 

See Raleigh ; Mary, Queen of Scots ; 
Bacon; Shakespeare; Virginia; Ar¬ 
mada. 

Elizabeth (1709-1762), empress of 
Russia. She was the daughter of Peter 
the Great and Catharine. From her fa¬ 
ther, she inherited ability; from her moth¬ 
er, beauty. She ascended the throne of 
Russia December 17, 1741, having first, 


by means of a conspiracy, removed her 
brother Ivan VI. She was an unprinci¬ 
pled and licentious woman. She was in¬ 
fluenced by favorites and governed the 
country through them. The slightest ob¬ 
jection to her measures or to her friends 
was followed by imprisonment or by exile 
for life to the mines of Siberia. The re¬ 
deeming quality in her life was her patron¬ 
age of literature. She furnished Voltaire 
with the materials for his life of Peter the 
Great. She also founded the University 
of Moscow and the Academy of Fine Arts 
at St. Petersburg. In the case of men like 
Alexander, Peter, and Napoleon, the his¬ 
torian permits their talents to cover their 
vices and accords the title of the Great. 
In the case of a woman, however, vices are 
never forgotten. The name of Elizabeth 
is prominent in Russian history, but the 
art of writers has never been employed to 
shield her from the reputation of infamy. 

Elizabeth, Saint (1207-1231), of 
Hungary, sometimes called Elizabeth of 
Thuringia. She was born in Presburg, the 
daughter of the king. When only four 
years old she was betrothed to Louis IV, 
landgrave of Thuringia, whom she married 
at fourteen. From her early childhood she 
disliked the pomp and glitter of the court, 
delighting herself with the study of re¬ 
ligion and with acts of charity. Her hus¬ 
band was influenced by her noble character 
and helped her in the kind deeds with 
which her days were filled. After his 
death in 1227 she was driven penniless 
from the throne by her brother-in-law, and 
lived with her three children in actual 
want until the throne was restored to her 
son by her barons. She spent the rest 
of her life in seclusion, however, doing 
severe penances and helping the sick, even 
those with the most loathsome diseases. 
Four years after her death she was canon¬ 
ized by Gregory IX. 

Elizabeth, originally Elizabethtown, 
New Jersey, was settled by the English 
in 1665, and until 1790 was the capital of 
the state as well as the original seat of 
Princeton College. It is located on Staten 
Island Sound, and connected with Eliz- 
abethport on the island by a drawbridge 
800 feet long. Its shipping, largely coal 


ELK—ELLIS ISLAND 


and iron, is carried on through Elizabeth- 
port. The Singer sewing-machine factories 
are located here, as are also manufactories 
of pottery, paints, machinery, leather and 
rubber goods, artificial stone and cars. 
Its unusual facilities for commerce have 
led to its being called “The Railroad Har¬ 
bor City.” Its population in 1910 was 
73,409. 

Elk, a genus of the deer family. The 
American elk or wapiti is really a large 
deer,—the largest and finest deer in North 
America. It is chestnut in summer and 
grayish in winter. It corresponds in the 
west to the caribou in the east. It is a 
stately animal nearly as large as the moose. 
It attains a live weight of 1,000 pounds. 
The antlers attain a spread of thirty to 
fifty inches. It has small, shapely legs, 
and hoofs fitted for hard ground. Like 
the deer it sheds its antlers annually. Its 
original range corresponded with that of 
the buffalo. It was once found from Vir¬ 
ginia to Wisconsin and westward, but it is 
now nearly extinct. Possibly 20,000 still 
find shelter in and about the Yellowstone 
National Park. In the winter season they 
migrate southward to graze in the valleys 
of Jackson’s Hole. There are small herds 
in the Olympia Mountains of Washington, 
in Oregon, California, Colorado, Mon¬ 
tana, Idaho, and Manitoba. Fortunately, 
elk do well in parks. A herd of sixty- 
two has been set free in the Adirondacks. 
Mr. W. C. Whitney built up a large herd 
near Lenox, Massachusetts. Twenty or 
more American cities have herds in their 
parks. The real American elk are the 
moose and the caribou—flat-antlered ani¬ 
mals. The remains of a huge elk have 
been found in the peat bogs of Ireland. 
The tips of its enormous antlers are eleven 
feet apart. See Deer. 

Elks, Benevolent and Protective Or¬ 
der of, a fraternal organization formed by 
members of the theatrical profession in 
New York City in 1868. Men in other 
occupations are now admitted to member¬ 
ship. There are over 800 lodges through¬ 
out the country, with a membership of over 
130,000. The order is not primarily a 
charitable organization, but has expended 
$1,500,000 for charitable purposes. 


Ellipse. See Cone. 

Ellis Island, an island in New York 
Bay. It has been used by the nation¬ 
al authorities since 1890 as a receiving 
station for immigrants. Castle Garden, 
the old landing station, became too strait¬ 
ened for the thorough medical examina¬ 
tion which was found necessary, so a new 
building with adequate facilities for hand¬ 
ling a crowd was erected on Ellis Island, a 
mile out in the bay. The buildings are 
extensive, and, indeed, there is need of 
space, for the annual influx of immigrants 
that at present passes through the guarded 
doors of Ellis Island is equal to the popu¬ 
lation of Boston, Cambridge, and Lynn 
combined. Enough unskilled laborers 
come in yearly to duplicate the population 
of Cleveland or Cincinnati. 

The work of the station officials is sys¬ 
tematic. The ship is first examined by a 
quarantine officer. If pronounced free 
from contagion the ship comes into harbor. 
The first class passengers go ashore by 
means of a steam barge and get their 
effects through the custom house. The 
steerage passengers, each provided with a 
numbered manifest of source, finance, and 
destination, get their baggage and children 
together with incredible din, and in evi¬ 
dent fear of losing something. They are 
guided down a wide gangway and are con¬ 
veyed by a barge to the broad steps of 
Ellis Island. The real ordeal begins here. 
The throng surges slowly forward. Guides 
able to speak the languages, push, pull, and 
shout directions. Lynx-eyed surgeons and 
detectives, each at his post, size up the im¬ 
migrants as they pass in line, and chalk 
their clothing with a letter. A central hall 
of great dimensions is divided by railings 
into lettered compartments. Attendants 
guide the newcomers into these compart¬ 
ments. “Compartment F” is filling up 
with able-bodied Italians. Perhaps they 
have a leader. As soon as the count is 
complete—possibly one or more may have 
been sent to a detention compartment for 
stricter medical inspection,—this lot is con¬ 
ducted to a barge and sent on via the 
Pennsylvania Central to dig an irrigation 
canal in the Far West. These women, 
struggling up the stairway with bundles on 




ELLORA—ELM 


their backs, bundles in their hands, chil¬ 
dren clinging to their skirts, and health 
tickets held in their teeth, are duly in¬ 
spected and chalked and bunched in 
“Compartment K.” Before nightfall they 
will be on their way to join their Finnish 
husbands, who have sent back wages 
earned in the iron mines of Minnesota. 
Two days and they will be the center of 
an excited Finnish mining colony, every¬ 
body talking at once; a week and they will 
be housekeepers in wooden shacks, and the 
children will be in school, on the way to 
become Americans. 

But all do not get away from Ellis 
Island. “S. I.” on the lapel of a lame 
man sends him to a board of special in¬ 
quiry. He may be a cripple whom 
“friends” have sent to America to escape 
the expense of supporting him. “L. P. C.” 
means an inquiry lest the bearer be 
liable to become a public charge, in which 
case the steamship company is required to 
take him back to the old country again. 

One stairway leads up from the steamer 
landing to the great floor. Three stair¬ 
ways known as the “Stairs of Separation” 
lead down another way. One of these 
leads to the barge which conveys immi¬ 
grants to the Battery and to the freedom 
of New York City. A second leads to a 
barge that conveys passengers to the great 
railway stations for transportation farther 
on. A third leads to a waiting room 
where impatient friends may be in wait¬ 
ing. Pathetic reunions take place and 
heart-breaking separations are of daily oc¬ 
currence. Brothers and sisters go their 
several ways on the “Stairs of Separation,’ 
never to meet again. Families leave be¬ 
hind them the feeble and aged, whom they 
cannot take farther because they cannot 
show that they are able to support them. 
Lovers, looking forward to a home in the 
New World, may be separated; for the 
strong may enter, but those afflicted with 
certain contagion must go back. 

Now and then a criminal is arrested or 
barred. A matron scans the women close¬ 
ly. The officials are described as kindly, 
but Arm. Europeans find it cheap rid¬ 
dance to pay the passage of paupers and 
the infirm. Our shores must not be made 
11-33 


a dumping ground for European distress. 
The work of inspection is necessarily rapid 
and keen, for a thousand immigrants is 
not a large day’s work. As high as 11,000 
have landed in a single day. Those who 
can show a fair bill of health and an abil¬ 
ity to care for themselves are given a bag 
of food and are sent on promptly to their 
destination. Others receive a special hear¬ 
ing ; they are allowed to send for friends; 
and, if error there be, it is likely to be 
made on the. side of leniency. 

See Alien; Immigration. 

Ellora, a town in British India about 
200 miles northeast of Bombay. It is 
noted chiefly for a rock-hewn temple. The 
work is thought to date about 1000 B. C., 
or even later. The rock is cut away both in¬ 
side and out, so that the temple itself, a sin¬ 
gle piece of solid rock, stands in an immense 
open pit 270 feet long and 150 feet wide. 
The walls of the pit or court are cut into a 
colonnade or cloister, and contain a series of 
cells. The temple itself, not built, but 
cut out where it stands, contains a central 
hall, with a pyramidal roof eighty feet 
high. This central hall is surrounded by 
columns and by chambers in the wall. It 
is entered by a porch, the roof of which 
rests on sixteen decorated pillars. All pil¬ 
lars and columns, it should be understood, 
are parts of the living rock left in place 
as the excavation proceeded. The temple 
described is the most remarkable thing of 
the kind known. There are three or four 
miles of rock-hewn caves in the vicinity of 
Ellora. 

Elm, a fine spreading tree, belonging 
to the same family as the nettle, the hop, 
and the mulberry. There are four elms 
in the eastern part of the United States. 
The wahoo elm, a small tree with winged 
corky branches, Ohio Valley and south¬ 
ward; the rock elm, of which Oliver Wen¬ 
dell Holmes’ parson built his wonderful 
one-hoss shay; the slippery elm held in 
fond memory for its delight-yielding inner 
bark; and the famous American or white 
elm, the finest shade tree on the continent. 
The trunk not infrequently attains a girth 
of sixteen feet. Volumes might be writ¬ 
ten on the types and individuality of the 
American elm. It is at once hardy, 


f 


EL PASO—ELZEVIR 


long-lived, and graceful. The native home 
of this elm is the rich soil along woodland 
rivers, but it withstands the trampling of 
village streets. New England is noted for 
its elm-lined streets. New Haven is some¬ 
times called the City of Elms. The elm 
in Cambridge under which Washington 
took command of the Continental army is 
called the Washington Elm. Lowell 
called a volume of his poems, Under 
the Elms. The flowers have no petals. 
They come in early spring before the 
leaves. The fruit of the elm is a flat, cir¬ 
cular seed, winged all around with a thin, 
brown membrane. The ripe fruit flies in 
the wind like chaff. The leaves are 
strongly straight-veined. They are short- 
petioled and are oblique or unequally heart- 
shaped at the base. 

El Paso, Texas, the county seat of 
El Paso County, is a rapidly growing 
city located on the Rio Grande River, 
about 300 miles west of Dallas. It is 
reached by several of the important rail¬ 
way lines, having direct connection with 
the Pacific and Gulf Coasts and the cap¬ 
ital of Mexico. The city is finely located, 
occupying a high elevation and for this 
reason enjoys a mean annual temperature 
of about 63° F. Extensive deposits of 
salt as well as other minerals, are found 
near by. The city is the center of a large 
trade in cattle but also contains smelting 
works, cigar factories and other industries. 
A United States Military Post is located 
here. In addition to the public schools, 
the city contains St. Joseph’s Academy, 
a School of Mines and a Theological Sem¬ 
inary. The population of the city has 
more than doubled during the past decade, 
being, in 1900, 15,906 and in 1910, 39,279. 

Elsie Venner. See Holmes, Oliver W. 

Elves of Light. See Alfheim. 

Ely, Richard Theodore (1854-), an 
American economist. He was born at Rip¬ 
ley, New York and his education was pur¬ 
sued at Columbia University and at 
Heidelberg. For ten years from 1881 he 
was professor at Johns Hopkins, and from 
1892 at the University of Wisconsin. He 
has written several books on economic sub¬ 
jects, among them, French and German 
Socialism in Modern Times, Socialism and 


Social Reform, Social Aspects of Chris¬ 
tianity, The Distribution of Wealth, Prob¬ 
lems of Today, and a text-book, Elements 
of Economics. His writings, while not 
socialistic, show a marked sympathy with 
the labor element. 

Elysium, e-liz'ium, or The Elysian 
Fields, in Greek mythology, the abode of 
the souls of heroes. It is a region in the 
far west where there is neither snow nor 
storm, heat nor cold. Gentle zephyrs and 
balmy breezes blow continually, and heal¬ 
ing odors are spread abroad. Hesiod de¬ 
scribes these Islands of the Blessed as lo¬ 
cated in the far Atlantic. The climate is 
so mild and propitious that the soil yields 
three crops a year, a description not in¬ 
appropriate to the Bermudas. It is 
thought that the idea of an Elysium was 
suggested to the Greek mind by the glories 
of a western sunset. The conception of 
Elysium is mingled with ideas of the 
spotless purity of heaven, cloud islands 
tinged with gold and floating in a deep 
blue sky, and asphodel meadows, which 
none but the pure in heart may tread. To 
this blissful abode, warriors who had de¬ 
served well of the gods might pass without 
encountering death, and live in perpetual 
happiness. The idea has its parallel in 
the happy hunting ground of the American 
Indians. The words Elysium and Elysian 
are in common use in literature. Elysium 
is used often as synonymous with heaven, 
or to designate any delightful abode; Ely¬ 
sian to describe that which is superlatively 
pleasant or beatific. 

Who, as they sung, would take the prison’d soul, 
And lap it in Elysium. —Milton. 

There is no death ! what seems so is transition ; 

This life of mortal breath 
Is but a suburb of the life Elysian, 

Whose portal we call Death. —Longfellow. 

Elzevir, a celebrated family of Dutch 
printers of the seventeenth century. The 
founder of the family reputation was Louis 
Elzevir, who established himself as a book¬ 
binder and bookseller in Leyden. A copy 
of the Eutropius, a Latin author, appeared 
in 1592. It is regarded as the earliest 
Elzevir. In all he published about 150 
works, chiefly in Latin. His five sons con¬ 
tinued the business. The most noted El- 


EMANCIPATION—EMBALMING 


zevirs, as their editions are called, are of 
small size, 12mo., 16mo., or 24mo. In 
point of neatness, clearness, excellence of 
type, and beauty of paper, it is considered 
that the Elzevirs have not been surpassed, 
even by the choicest specimens of modern 
printing. The last printer of the name 
died at Leyden, 1712. The total number 
of Elzevirs is 1213, of which 968 are in 
Latin, 44 in Greek, 126 in French, 32 in 
Flemish, 22 in various eastern languages, 
11 in German, and 10 in Italian. Al¬ 
though none are in English, these editions 
are much sought by booksellers. The cov¬ 
er designs are considered highly artistic. 
See Book. 

Emancipation, Proclamation of, in 

American history, a state document setting 
free all slaves of such states and parts of 
states as were in rebellion against the au¬ 
thority of the national government. It 
was made January 1, 1863. It was issued 
by President Lincoln as a military mea¬ 
sure, acting in his capacity as commander- 
in-chief of the army and navy. It set free 
all slaves in Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana 
(except certain parishes including the city 
of New Orleans), Mississippi, Alabama, 
Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North 
Carolina, and Virginia,—West Virginia 
and certain counties excepted. The slaves 
were enjoined to “labor faithfully for rea¬ 
sonable wages wherever they were permit¬ 
ted to do so.” It was written New Year’s 
morning by President Lincoln in his own 
hand. The penmanship is firm and neat. 
The signature is scraggly. The president 
explained that he was not particularly agi¬ 
tated when he signed, but that a stream of 
New York callers had come in ere he com¬ 
pleted the task, and that his grasp of the 
pen had become tremulous through exces¬ 
sive handshaking. The official proclama¬ 
tion was, of course, drawn up at the State 
Department. The original copy on four 
sheets of foolscap was presented to the 
managers of a fair held in Chicago for the 
benefit of the soldiers. It sold for $3,000. 
It was destroyed in the great Chicago fire. 
Fortunately photographic copies are in ex¬ 
istence. The memorable pen, a steel affair 
in a plain colored cedar handle—the two 
together not worth to exceed six cents— 


passed into the hands of a citizen of Bos¬ 
ton. See Negro; Lincoln. 

Embalming, em-bam'mg, the art of 
preparing dead bodies to prevent their de¬ 
cay. It was practiced in Egypt as early as 
4000 B. C. A special class of low grade 
priests or physicians was employed. They 
embalmed not only human bodies, but cats, 
crocodiles, the ibis, ichneumon, and other 
sacred animals. It cost a talent of silver, 
or over $1,000, to embalm the body of a 
person of rank. The interior of the body 
was filled with myrrh, cassia and other 
preservative materials. The body was 
then steeped for seventy days in natron or 
carbonate of sodium found in the lakes of 
the Libyan Desert and Upper Egypt. It 
was then wrapped in linen bands, well 
waxed, and was deposited in an artistically 
constructed wooden coffin or sarcophagus. 
Joseph, it may be remembered, ordered his 
servants to embalm his father, Jacob. So 
well was embalming done, that it has been 
possible during the last century to photo¬ 
graph the shrunken faces of the ancient 
pharaohs, whose mummies, as the pre¬ 
pared bodies are called, were discovered in 
the royal burial places of Egypt. After 
the lapse of from 3,000 to 4,000 years, the 
palm of the hand and the sole of the foot 
are still flexible and soft to the touch. A 
number of American museums possess well 
preserved Egyptian mummies and sarco¬ 
phagi. A mummy found in a sandstone 
grave on the west bank of the Nile, and 
now preserved in the British Museum, is 
considered the oldest body known. Flint 
knives show that the burial took place in 
the stone age. 

Less expensive methods were employed 
to preserve the bodies of the poor. In 
brief they were salted and dried. The 
custom ceased about 700 A. D. One au¬ 
thor estimates that not less than 700,- 
000,000 Egyptian mummies were disposed 
in the caverns and cliff burial places of the 
Egyptians. The exceedingly dry climate 
had much to do with the success of the 
preservation of these mummies. Much of 
the spice and embalming material was 
brought from the eastern countries by car¬ 
avan, and naturally was regarded as very 
precious. 



EMBLA—EMBROIDERY 


Various embalming materials were used 
by different nations. The Assyrians used 
honey. The body of Alexander the Great 
was embalmed in wax and honey. Other 
materials were the pitch of the cedar tree, 
asphalt, salt, gypsum, and saltpeter. Em¬ 
balming has been employed successfully in 
England also. The body of King Canute, 
laid away in Winchester Catneciral in 1036, 
was found in a good state of preservation 
in 1776. The body of William the Con¬ 
queror and his wife Mathilda were still 
recognizable at Caen five centuries after 
their burial. In modern times the art of 
embalming is practiced by undertakers 
chiefly to preserve bodies for a limited pe¬ 
riod of time. Zinc chloride, arsenic, and 
mercuric chloride are among the agents 
employed. As they are rank poisons, great 
care is necessary in their use. Embalming 
materials one and all are merely germi¬ 
cides—anti-bacterial agents. 

Many tribes of American Indians ele¬ 
vate the bodies of their dead upon scaf¬ 
folds, and endeavor to preserve them as 
long as possible by a process of drying. 

See Pyramids. 

Embla. See Aske. 

Embossing, in the manufacture of tex¬ 
tiles, the process of producing raised fig¬ 
ures on the surface of textiles, leather, etc. 
Heated metal rollers are engraved with 
patterns. The cloth is passed under the 
roller several times, the heat and pressure 
producing upon the velvet or other mate¬ 
rial the figure cut upon the metal. 

Embroidery, the art of working orna¬ 
mental designs with the needle upon any 
fabric. The designs appear as if raised, 
and may be worked out in silk, cotton, wool, 
or other yarns. The name comes from an 
Anglo-Saxon word meaning edge or bor¬ 
der, probably from the fact the embroidery 
was used chiefly to finish and adorn the 
edges of church vestments. The art is of 
great antiquity. A thread of silk, cotton, 
gold, or silver was used to ornament cloth 
and leather, especially the borders of hang¬ 
ings, royal garments, and articles used in 
religious ceremonies. Homer speaks of the 
embroiderer’s art. The Hebrews learned to 
embroider in Egypt. The garments of 
Aaron, the high priest, were embroidered. 


The hem of his robe bore pomegranates of 
blue, purple, and scarlet. The Laplander 
still embroiders the reindeer skin used for 
leggings. The North American Indian em¬ 
broidered his moccasins elaborately with. 
threads of sinew and strips of gayly col¬ 
ored porcupine quills. The famous Bayeux 
tapestry was a sort of embroidery worked 
with the needle and worsted on a wide can¬ 
vas. The border of the Cashmere shawl 
is practically the same thing. The art of 
embroidery attained high perfection among 
the ancient Greeks, whose work has affect¬ 
ed all its subsequent developments. 

From the ninth to the fifteenth century 
needlework flourished throughout all Eu¬ 
rope, but especially in France and Eng¬ 
land. Embroidery was a favorite occupa¬ 
tion of women of all ranks. At first it 
was confined to the ornamentation of ec¬ 
clesiastical garments, altar cloths, and 
coverings for sacred books, but it devel¬ 
oped gradually into pictorial embroidery. 
Both men and women pursued this art and 
many marvelous examples of the skill at¬ 
tained are preserved. Embroidery became 
fashionable as a method of decorating 
wearing apparel. The work was handsome 
and expensive, only the wealthy being able 
to afford it. In the early part of the 
nineteenth century embroidery on muslin 
became popular in both Europe and Amer¬ 
ica. This produced a washable and dur¬ 
able trimming. The materials were inex¬ 
pensive and the result beautiful. Girls 
were taught to embroider. In some com¬ 
munities, if a woman’s attire was without 
this adornment, she was considered shift¬ 
less or lazy. The needlewomen of Switzer¬ 
land excelled in the skill and taste requisite 
for superiority in embroidering, and grad¬ 
ually their work came to be known 
throughout the world. 

About 1828 Joseph Heilman of Alsace 
invented an embroidering machine, an im¬ 
proved form of which is used to produce 
most of the white embroidery on the mar¬ 
ket at the present time. The first machine- 
made embroidery shipped to the United 
States was consigned to a New York house 
by S. Hamel of Hamburg, Germany. Al¬ 
though a Swiss product, Hamel called the 
embroidery Hamburg, presumably that his 




EMERALD—EMERSON 


own city might have the credit of its manu¬ 
facture. As a result Swiss embroideries 
were known for many years in the United 
States as Hamburgs. 

The embroidery machine is simple. A 
width of muslin or other material four and 
one-half yards long, is stretched in an up- 
right position in the center of the machine, 
each end held firmly by hooks. The need¬ 
les, from 150 to 300 in number, are ar¬ 
ranged in a straight row in a sort of 
frame. The needles point toward the 
cloth and extend from end to end of it. 
The needle used has its eye in the middle 
instead of the end-. Each needle carries a 
thread held in the eye by a peculiar knot. 
The frame moves forward causing the 
needles to pierce the cloth simultaneously. 
Thus corresponding stitches are set at the 
same time in all sections of the pattern 
through the four and one-half yard strip 
of cloth. When one row of embroidery is 
complete, the cloth is raised and a second 
row made. This machine is controlled by 
hand. A machine operated by power is 
used to some extent for certain kinds of 
embroidery. Its use is increasing. 

The Bonnaz embroidering machine is 
designed for another variety of work. This 
is quite similar to an ordinary sewing ma¬ 
chine, but the needle, instead of being sta¬ 
tionary, is movable, so that it is made to 
follow the outlines of the pattern, and the 
material does not have to be turned around. 
This is used for fancy stitches on lace cur¬ 
tains and other large articles. The ma¬ 
chine is a “single thread” and produces a 
chain stitch. Industrially, there are two 
classes of embroidery. First, white em¬ 
broidery on various grades of cotton and 
linen cloth. This is produced usually by 
machinery. In the production of this class 
of work Switzerland still stands first, then 
France, Germany, and Scotland. The sec¬ 
ond class includes embroideries done in 
silks, gold threads, and silver threads. This 
work is dorie by hand. The oriental na¬ 
tions excel in this class of embroidery, 
China taking the lead in elaborate, speci¬ 
mens, with Japan standing second. The 
skilled workers of these countries embroid¬ 
er both sides of the material exactly alike. 
Elaborate pictures of great size and in 


brilliant colors are used by them as wall 
decorations. In these countries embroidery 
forms the principal decoration for dress 
of both men and women. 

Emerald, a precious stone. It is of a 
peculiar green color. It is found in the 
form usually of a short, six-sided crystal. 
It is rather a soft stone, being little harder 
than quartz. It is a variety of beryl, with 
a trace of chromium. When heated, the 
emerald turns blue, but resumes its natural 
color again when cool. If heated too 
far, however, it melts into a white, cloud¬ 
ed mass of no value whatever. The 
emeralds of the ancients were obtained 
from Ethiopia and Upper Egypt. They 
were greatly prized, both on account of 
their rich color and the ease with which 
they could be carved into desired figures. 
The finest emeralds of modern times have 
been obtained from Peru, Colombia, and 
the Urals. The largest emerald known is 
that in the Royal Museum at St. Peters¬ 
burg. It was obtained in the Ural Moun¬ 
tains and weighs over six pounds. A mag¬ 
nificent emerald gem is kept with the crown 
jewels in the treasure chamber of the im¬ 
perial palace at Vienna. In the language 
of precious gems, the emerald represents 
success in love. Ireland is called the Em¬ 
erald Isle because it is usually clothed 
with beautifully green vegetation. 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882), 
an eminent American essayist, lecturer, and 
poet. He was born at Boston May 25, 
1803, and died at Concord April 27, 1882. 
His father was a Unitarian clergyman. 
Young Emerson was educated at Harvard, 
receiving his degree in 1821. He taught 
school for a few years, studied theology, 
and entered upon an assistant pastorate in 
his native city. In 1832 he resigned this 
position on the score of unwillingness to 
administer the sacrament of the Lord’s 
Supper. He was also opposed to the prac¬ 
tice of prayer in public, yet throughout his 
entire life he was a constant attendant at 
church. Emerson was married twice. The 
death of his first wife placed him in pos¬ 
session of a property with an income of 
$1,200 a year. On this amount he settled 
comfortably at Concord, Massachusetts. 
He was a man of simple habits. He passed 


EMERSON 




his life in reading, meditating, traveling, 
lecturing’ and writing articles. Between 
thirty and forty years were spent in this 
way. 

Although Emerson shrank from promi¬ 
nence and from participation in public af¬ 
fairs, he was a keen observer. He took a 
deep interest in the Brook Farm experi¬ 
ment, yet remained in his own quiet home. 
He was also interested deeply in the ques¬ 
tion of abolishing human slavery. He ap¬ 
pears, however, to have remained calm, 
trusting to the general trend of events ra¬ 
ther than to agitation. For this reason, 
he was never reckoned among the abolition¬ 
ists. When the Civil War broke out he 
was a supporter of the Union cause, yet 
it is safe to say that one of his gentle hab¬ 
its would never have been willing to take 
the responsibility of bringing on the war. 
Few men have done more to stimulate and 
help on reforms, but he was not himself a 
man of action. 

Educators find sound doctrine in his es¬ 
says. He teaches that desired reforms and 
changes of opinion may be brought about 
best by beginning with the children in 
school. He mentions repeatedly the advan¬ 
tages of teaching children gardening, a 
knowledge of plants and animals, and of 
the use of tools,—thus foreshadowing the 
modern call for manual training and the 
elements of agriculture. As might be ex¬ 
pected, he was an earnest supporter of art 
and literature in the schools. 

Emerson was a poet of no mean order. 
In the first place he had a delicate ear. He 
brought together a volume of the most ex¬ 
quisite poetry in the English language, 
which was issued by his publisher under 
the name of Parnassus. A good sized vol¬ 
ume is required also to contain his own 
poems. Of these, Each and All, The Rho- 
dora, and The Humble Bee would certain¬ 
ly deserve a place in a volume of the 
world’s best poems. The Fable, or the 
quarrel between the mountain and the 
squirrel, is a little gem for the schoolroom. 
The Snowstorm is one of the most ex¬ 
quisite bits of snow poetry in our language. 

One of the pleasantest episodes in the 
life of Emerson is his friendship for Car¬ 
lyle. During a visit to Scotland he called 


on Carlyle while the latter was living at 
a lonely home in the country, writing the 
first of the essays that made him famous. 
From this time on the two men exchanged 
letters with regularity. Emerson was in¬ 
fluential in calling attention to Carlyle’s 
writings, and Carlyle recognized Emerson 
as one of the great men of the century. 
The Carlyle-Emerson correspondence fills 
two respectable volumes. 

Emerson’s lectures and magazine articles 
were published in a number of volumes. 
The first, called Nature, was published in 
1836. Other volumes are Essays, Rep¬ 
resentative Men, English* Traits, Conduct 
of Life, Society and Solitude, and Letters 
and Social Aims. 

Emerson has a peculiar style, or want of 
style. His essays show a wide range of 
reading and much sound, original thought; 
but they are very different from anything 
else produced on this continent. Narrative 
or story-telling is condensed to the merest 
mention. Apt allusions are frequent, and 
show that he had an observing eye and a 
reflective mind, but description is entirely 
wanting. His essays are almost without 
plan. It is said that as he wrought in his 
garden, walked in the woods, read in his 
library, or lay awake in bed, he was in the 
habit of jotting down good thoughts as 
they occurred to him. When in need of 
something to say he distributed his loose 
pieces of paper all over the floor and fur¬ 
niture of his study, and went down on his 
knees, groping around among them .to 
bring together a sufficient number to make 
up an essay or lecture. Whether this be 
true literally or not, it is evident that the 
thoughts of even his best essays are strung 
together without very much regard to the 
order in which they occur. If the various 
paragraphs were separated, it would be 
difficult, if not impossible, to restore them 
to their present position. Nevertheless, 
few writers have left so many sentences 
worthy of passing into popular sayings. 
Benjamin Franklin is the only other Amer¬ 
ican who exceeds him in this respect. The 
greater popularity of Franklin’s saying is 
due to the fact that they seem to come 
from the field and the shop, rather than 
from the library. Emerson’s sentences 


EMERY—EMIN PASHA 


have done more to stimulate the thought of 
the writer, the clergyman, and teacher than 
those of any other literary man of his 
century. Mr. Sanborn affirms that the 
nearest approach that any American has 
made to the universality of Shakespeare’s 
mind is found in the wide reach and easy 
elevation of Emerson. 

1 he following are a few of his sayings: 

America means opportunity. 

All are needed by each one. 

He builded better than he knew. 

Thoughts rule the world. 

Man in the bush with God may meet. 

Beauty is its own excuse for being. 

Put your creed into your deed. 

Discontent is the want of self reliance. 

There is always time enough for courtesy. 

Proverbs are the sanctuary of the intuitions. 

A great man is always willing to be little. 

Manners are the happy way of doing things. 

Thought is the property of him who can enter¬ 
tain it. 

Nothing great was ever achieved without en¬ 
thusiasm. 

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece 
of Nature. 

The hearing ear is always found close to the 
speaking tongue. 

We do not count a man’s years until he has 
nothing else to count. 

Next to the originator of a good sentence is 
the first quoter of it. 

If the single man plant himself indomitably 
on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world 
will come round to him. 

If you put a chain around the neck of a 
slave, the other end fastens itself around your 
own. 

No man ever prayed heartily without learning 
something. 

See Concord; Thoreau. 

Emery, a fine grained, black sandstone. 
Its color is due to the presence of iron. In 
use it may be cut into the shape of a 
grindstone and caused to rotate on an axis; 
but it is so difficult to work that it is really 
easier to pound the stone into a powder 
and build it up into the required shape 
again with cement. Rubber and copper 
are frequently added to the composition to 
diminish danger from breaking. The em¬ 
ery paper on sale at hardware stores con¬ 
sists of paper coated with glue and dusted 
with emery powder. Its principal use is in 
smoothing metal and wood. Emery cloth 
is prepared in the same way. It is used 
chiefly for polishing metals. Emery is 


found in Massachusetts, Georgia, and 
North Carolina; but the world’s chief sup¬ 
ply is obtained from Asia Minor and the 
Grecian Archipelago. Emery ranks next 
to the diamond in hardness. It will cut 
glass or any other material save the dia¬ 
mond. See Corundum; Aluminum; 
Sapphire. 

Emigration, a movement of population 
out of a country, due usually to labor con¬ 
ditions. Such a movement usually occurs 
to a country or to countries less thickly 
populated and offering a better chance to 
make a living than the emigrants’ own, 
though people may be driven from home by 
political or religious persecution, as were 
the Puritans. Some people leave, of 
course, for personal reasons, perhaps to 
join their relatives or to study. Since 1850 
great hordes of emigrants from Europe, of 
late years chiefly from the southern coun¬ 
tries, have poured into the United States. 
They have been very much needed to build 
railroads, cut down forests and otherwise 
to promote our great commercial enter¬ 
prises, but they have created many prob¬ 
lems as to how they shall be treated for 
their own best good and that of the coun¬ 
try. See Immigration. 

Emin' Pasha', or Emin Bey (1840- 
1892), a Prussian surgeon known as an 
African explorer and governor. His real 
name was Eduard Schnitzer. In 1865 he 
was appointed surgeon of the Turkish 
army. He acquired the Turkish and 
Arabic languages readily and in addition 
many customs and habits. He adopted the 
name Emin which means “faithful one.” 
He entered the Egyptian service in 1876 
and was made surgeon-general of the 
Egyptian army in the Sudan. Two years 
later General Gordon appointed him gov¬ 
ernor of the equatorial province where he 
made various explorations. The insurrec¬ 
tion of the dervishes under the Mahdi in 
1883 shut Emin away from the civilized 
world, although he retained his position. 
In 1887 he was made pasha or governor by 
the Egyptian government,—thus the word 
pasha, added commonly to the designation 
of Emin. An expedition under Stanley 
reached Emin Pasha in 1888 but he re¬ 
fused to leave his people. In 1889 he was 


EMINENT DOMAIN—EMS 


deposed and imprisoned and after his re¬ 
lease left the country. Soon after he went 
on an exploring expedition into East 
Africa for the German East Africa Com¬ 
pany. He was killed by Arabs during this 
expedition. See Gordon; Mahdi; Stan¬ 
ley. 

Eminent Domain, the power of the 
state to take private property for public 
use upon making a just payment to the 
owner. The right is exercised much less 
freely, of course, than other powers of a 
government, but there are times when pub¬ 
lic welfare and even public safety depend 
upon the use by the government of some 
private property. This is especially true 
in time of war, though the right is exer¬ 
cised oftener to obtain land for public 
buildings, franchises for government own¬ 
ership, etc. The condemning of lots upon 
which to construct state university build- 
, ings is an example of its use. 

Emmanuel Movement. See Chris¬ 
tian Science. 

Emmet, Robert (1778-1803), an em¬ 
inent Irish patriot. He was born in Dub¬ 
lin. His father, for whom he was named, 
was a physician. Young Robert attended 
Trinity College, Dublin. He was a promi¬ 
nent member of the so-called Historical So¬ 
ciety, and was an ardent champion of the 
independence of Ireland. He resented Eng¬ 
lish rule. It became the wish of his life 
that Ireland should follow the example of 
the American colonies and set up a republic. 
In 1798 he was expelled from college for 
membership in a secret association known 
as the United Irishmen. He then traveled 
on the continent, but returned secretly in 
1802 and took part in the organization of 
an Irish revolution. July 23, 1803, Em¬ 
met and his associates made an attempt to 
surprise the arsenal and the castle of Dub¬ 
lin, but his followers were timid and the 
effort resulted in little more than a riot. 
Emmet fled to the interior to the Wicklow 
Mountains, and might have escaped from 
Ireland, but that he visited Dublin for a 
last interview with a Miss Curran, to whom 
he was engaged. This visit proved his un¬ 
doing. He was arrested, tried on the charge 
of high treason, and on September 20, 1803, 
executed in Saint Thomas Street, Dublin. 


Thomas Moore, the Irish poet, was a 
schoolfellow of Robert Emmet, a fellow 
student at Trinity College, and a warm 
personal friend. One of the most pathetic 
of his Irish melodies, “O, breathe not his 
name,’’ was written to commemorate Em¬ 
met’s sad fate. Miss Curran left Dublin and 
died in Sicily soon after. Moore made her 
the subject of another melody, “She is far 
from the land where her young hero 
sleeps.” 

Although rash and impracticable, Em¬ 
met was a young man of irreproachable 
character. Even his enemies had nothing 
to say against his private life. When asked 
by his judges what he had to say in his 
own defense, Emmet defended himself in 
a speech of remarkable clearness, but with¬ 
out avail. When asked why the sentence 
of death should not be pronounced upon 
him, he spoke most eloquently, closing with 
the following paragraph: 

I have but one request to ask at my de¬ 
parture from this world—it is the charity of si¬ 
lence. Let no man write my epitaph; for, as no 
one who knows my motives dares now vindicate 
them, let no prejudice or ignorance asperse them. 
Let them and me repose in obscurity and peace, 
and my tomb remain uninscribed, until other 
times and other men can do justice to my char¬ 
acter. When my country shall take her place 
among the nations of the earth, then—and not 
till then—let my epitaph be written. 

Emotion. See Feeling. 

Ems, emz, a famous watering place in 
western Prussia. It is situated in the val¬ 
ley of the Lahn, twelve miles from Cob¬ 
lenz. The valley is here inclosed by rocky 
cliffs crowned with woods and vineyards. 
Old coins, weapons, and other relics found 
here indicate that it was at one time a Ro¬ 
man post. There are lead and silver mines 
here, but the town owes its fame to its 
mineral springs. The waters are warm, 
ranging in temperature from 70° to 130°F. 
They are strongly impregnated with car¬ 
bonic acid gas, and afford relief in cases 
of chronic catarrh and lung troubles. The 
city is given over largely to hotels and oth¬ 
er accommodations for summer visitors. 
From 10,000 to 15,000 patients and tour¬ 
ists visit the city each summer. While here 
for his health in the summer of 1870, King 
William III, afterward Emperor William 



EMU—ENCYCLOPEDIA 


I of Germany, was approached by the am¬ 
bassador of Napoleon III. The French¬ 
man took advantage of the old king in a 
casual meeting in a garden, and goaded 
him unhandsomely, practically giving no¬ 
tice that brought on the Franco-Prussian 
War of 1871. 

Emu, e'mu, a large three-toed bird pe¬ 
culiar to the Australian region. It is in¬ 
termediate in size between the cassowary 
and the ostrich, to both of which it is 
related. Its body is draped with an abund¬ 
ance of sooty brown, hair-like feathers of 
a peculiar structure. The wings are short, 
and so hidden in the plumage that they 
are scarcely noticeable. The feathers are 
worthless for decoration. The flesh is not 
eaten save bv the natives. The emu is a 

J 

bird of the plains. It lives on grass, fruit, 
and roots. The nest is scooped in the sand. 
Eggs, six or seven, green, five inches long. 
On the score that the emu interfered with 
sheep-raising, emu hunts were popular, 
like many other interesting Australian an¬ 
imals, the emu is approaching extinction. 
It is found only in the far interior. Fortu¬ 
nately for ornithology the emu does well 
in captivity. The Duke of Bedford main¬ 
tains a flock in Woburn Park, England. 
Good park specimens may be had for about 
$125. See Ostrich ; Cassowary. . 

Encyclopedia, en-sl-klo-pe'di-a, liter¬ 
ally, the round of instruction. The term is 
from the Greek. By way of distinction, 
a cyclopedia covers less ground. A cyclo¬ 
pedia may extend to many volumes and 
contain a vast quantity of reading matter, 
but it is confined to a limited field of 
knowledge. Bailey’s Cyclopedia of Horti¬ 
culture, in four volumes, contains over 
2,000 finely printed pages, all, however, 
on the subject of horticulture. . Lalor’s 
Cyclopedia of Political Science, in thice 
volumes, falls little short of 3,000 pages. 
An encyclopedia may contain less lead 
ing matter, but its name implies that the 
information given pertains to all branches 
of knowledge, as history, literature,' science, 
art, etc. The distinction between the two 
terms is not always observed. 

The earliest attempts at work of an en- 
cyclopedic nature were made by Greek 
scholars at Alexandria. During the Mid¬ 


dle Ages various ambitious writers en¬ 
deavored to make compilations in Latin 
which should include the sum total of the 
world’s knowledge. The first encyclopedia 
arranged by topics alphabetically, that is 
to say, in dictionary style, is said to be the 
Lexicon Universale, printed in French at 
Basel in 1677 by John Jacob Hoffman. 
Twenty years later a second work of the 
sort, also in French, known as Bayle’s Dic- 
tionnaire was published at Rotterdam in 
four volumes. Perhaps the most famous 
encyclopedia ever published was that edited 
by two Frenchmen, Diderot and Alembert. 
It appeared 1751-1780 in thirty-five vol¬ 
umes. As an encyclopedia is a work of ref¬ 
erence, writers and editors are supposed to 
content themselves with stating informa¬ 
tion. These editors, however, seized the 
opportunity to make known their personal 
views relating to church, state, and society. 
Their work was assailed bitterly by the 
clergy and by the government. It set peo¬ 
ple to thinking, started discussion, and 
created discontent. It is thought to have 
done much to bring about the French 
Revolution. 

The most widely known work of the 
sort in the German language is the Brock- 
haus Conversations-Lexicon, which has 
passed through no less than fourteen edi¬ 
tions. 

Early in the eighteenth century, one of 
the Chinese emperors ordered a compila¬ 
tion of all the information worth saving. 
This huge compendium of knowledge is 
held in 1109 volumes under 32 heads, the 
largest encyclopedia known. In 1909 a 
copy of this work was presented by the 
Chinese government to our Library of 
Congress. 

The first encyclopedia in the English 
language was a folio volume published at 
London in 1704. It was called a Univer¬ 
sal English Dictionary of Arts and Sci¬ 
ences. The famous Encyclopedia Britan- 
nica was published at Edinburgh in 1771. 
The first edition contained three volumes. 
Twenty-eight volumes of the eleventh edi¬ 
tion have just been completed (1911). A 
twenty-ninth, or index volume, is to follow. 
The twenty-five volumes of the Metropoli- 
tana, another noted British work, were com- 


ENDYMION—ENERGY 


pleted in 1845. The Penny Cyclopedia, of 
twenty-five volumes, was completed a year 
later. The first edition of Chambers’s, in 
ten volumes, appeared in 1860. 

The earliest work of the sort in the 
United States was the Americana. It ap¬ 
peared in fourteen volumes, and was com¬ 
pleted in 1847. The American, edited by 
George Ripley and Charles A. Dana, was 
published by the Appletons in 1876 in six¬ 
teen volumes. The first edition of John¬ 
son’s Universal Cyclopedia appeared in 
four large volumes in 1874. A later edi¬ 
tion in eight volumes was published in 
1895. The International, at first an adap¬ 
tation of Alden’s Library of Universal 
Knowledge, was published in 1884. A 
new edition of seventeen volumes appeared 
in 1902. A still more recent edition of 
twenty volumes was published in 1910. 
The Encyclopedia Americana, an entirely 
new work, emanating from the editorial 
rooms of the Scientific American, is a late 
general work. Its sixteen volumes ap¬ 
peared in 1904. They are especially strong 
in signed articles of a scientific nature. 
In 1910 another edition appeared, this time 
in twenty volumes. Nelson’s Encyclopedia, 
a twelve volume set, was published in 1905. 

However desirable, it is now impossible 
for any corps of editors to bring together 
all the world’s knowledge. At the best, 
they can only select and present such facts 
as may seem most interesting and impor¬ 
tant. 

Endymion, en-dim'i-on, in Greek leg¬ 
end, a beautiful young shepherd who fed 
his flocks on Mount Latmus. According to 
one of the many stories about him, he had 
asked Zeus for immortal youth. Zeus 
granted his prayer, but, with the gift, con¬ 
demned him to perpetual sleep. So the 
beautiful youth slept forever upon the 
mountain. Selene, goddess of the moon, 
looked down one clear night and saw En¬ 
dymion asleep. His beauty charmed her 
and she came nearer. Stepping 

As from a golden car 

Out of the low-hung moon, 

she kissed the beautiful sleeper, and. then 
watched over him that no harm might be¬ 
fall him through the night. The story of 


Endymion has always appealed strongly 
to poet and artist. A statue of Parian 
marble called The Sleeping Endymion was 
found in Hadrian’s villa at Trevoli, and is 
now in the National Swedish Museum. The 
most noted poem on the subject is that of 
Keats, but it is noted because Keats wrote 
it, and not because he has succeeded in 
telling the story successfully. The first 
line is all anybody remembers and is as 
far as most people read. That line is the 
oft-quoted, “A thing of beauty is a joy 
forever.” See Diana. 

Energy, one of the two fundamental 
concepts of physical science, the other be¬ 
ing matter. It is defined in physics as the 
capacity for doing work. The relationship 
between energy and work is very intimate, 
no work being possible without energy be¬ 
ing expended and no energy stored up un¬ 
less work has been done upon the body. 

Energy is of two kinds: potential when 
the position of a body is such as to 
make work possible; and kinetic, when the 
body is capable of doing work as a result 
of its motion. If a ball be thrown vertical¬ 
ly upward, work is done in giving it the 
impulse which causes it to rise against the 
force of gravity. The kinetic energy, due 
to its motion, is a gradually diminishing 
one as the velocity falls off, till the extreme 
height is reached, when the kinetic energy 
becomes zero. As the body rises it gains 
in potential energy, or energy of position, 
till at its highest point this energy is a 
maximum. It is interesting to note that 
there is an exact theoretical equivalence 
between kinetic energy at the bottom and 
the potential energy at the top and that at 
any point in the path the sum of the 
energies is equal to that same number. 
This change of energy in a simple case such 
as this illustrates one of the fundamental 
laws of physical science known as the con¬ 
servation of energy. Briefly stated this is 
that the total amount of energy in any body 
may be neither increased nor diminished 
without outside influence, but that it may be 
transformed without absolute loss into any 
of the forms of energy to which it is sus¬ 
ceptible. This law is of universal applica¬ 
tion, as is also the fundamental law of 
conservation of matter. The kinetic energy 


ENGADINE—ENGLAND 


of the sun’s heat in past ages caused the 
conditions which gave rise to the vast for¬ 
ests which were later overwhelmed and 
became the coal beds. The potential 
energy of the chemical separation of the 
carbon from oxygen lies dormant in the 
coal till upon burning in the steam engine 
it becomes heat or molecular kinetic 
energy. Then if the steam engine runs a 
dynamo, we get electrical energy which in 
turn may become heat and light. 

Although the total energy of the solar 
system does not increase nor diminish, as 
stated in the law of conservation of energy, 
it is becoming less and less available. In 
all the transformations, some energy is dis¬ 
sipated in heat and is irrecoverable. So 
it is an incontrovertible fact that the avail¬ 
able energy of the solar system is running 
to waste, and we must view with equanim¬ 
ity the time when the earth and all the 
planets shall no longer circle round the 
glowing sun but all together in one dead 
mass shall hang lifeless in the everlasting 
night of space. See Work; Erg. 

Engadine, en-ga-den', a famous val¬ 
ley of eastern Switzerland. It is about 
sixty-five miles long, and is seldom more 
than one mile broad. In reality it is mere¬ 
ly the upper part of the valley of the River 
Inn. It is one of the few highways lead¬ 
ing from northern Italy into Bavaria. 
Lakes, springs, flowery meadows, charming 
inns, and beautiful scenery make it one of 
the most delightful routes for tourists in 
the world. The climate is described as 
“nine months winter and three months 
cold.” Certainly the summer is delight¬ 
fully cool and bracing. Aside from dairy 
products, the inhabitants maintain them¬ 
selves chiefly by the entertainment of tour¬ 
ists and summer boarders. The younger 
people go out to all parts of Europe and 
even America, as confectioners and cooks, 
returning as soon as they have earned a 
competence to spend their old age in their 
native valley. They are a strong, sober, in¬ 
telligent race, chiefly Protestant. Society 
is democratic. An old Engadine proverb 
runs to the effect that “Next to God and 
the sun, the poorest inhabitant is the chief 
magistrate.” The language of the people 
is a Romance dialect—akin to Italian. 


German is taught in the schools. See Tyr¬ 
ol ; Switzerland. 

Engine. See Locomotive; Steam En¬ 
gine. 

England, ing'gland, the southern part 
of the island of Great Britain. Its general 
outline is triangular. If we exclude 
Wales, the area of England is about 50,- 
216 square miles. With the exception of 
the Welsh and Scottish frontiers, the en¬ 
tire border is a seacoast, cut by bays and 
estuaries, forming the best harborage in 
the world. The western border is on the 
whole, rough. A mountainous region ex¬ 
tends from the Cheviot Hills southward to 
the plateau of Dartmoor. The peaks sel¬ 
dom rise, however, above 3,000 feet. The 
largest body of inland water in England 
is Lake Windermere, in the so-called lake 
region of Westmoreland County. It, how¬ 
ever, covers an area of less than three 
square miles. The western shore is for 
the most part of hard rock. The eastern 
and southern coasts consist of limestone 
and chalk cliffs. The waves are eating 
away portions of the coast of Yorkshire 
and Kent at the rate of four or five feet 
a year, amounting to a mile in four cen¬ 
turies. Of the Dover and eastern coast 
it may be said: “The materials which fall 
from the wasting cliff are sorted by the 
tide; the whole shore is in motion; every 
cliff is hastening to its fall; the parishes 
are contracted, the churches wasted away.” 

Climate. England lies within the in¬ 
fluence of the Gulf Stream. This ocean 
current brings with it winds of very nearly 
the same temperature the year around. The 
summers of England are prevented from 
becoming hot; the winters are never very 
cold. All parts of the country have abund¬ 
ant rain. An annual rainfall of fifteen 
inches may be regarded as a minimum. 
There are localities where the total rainfall 
for the year is over 100 inches. In con¬ 
sequence, the rivers are very large in 
proportion to their length. The Thames, 
the Humber, the Severn, and the Mersey 
are the principal streams. Nearly all emp¬ 
ty into estuaries of the ocean, which, by 
the aid of high tides, enable ships to as¬ 
cend for a considerable distance. New¬ 
castle, Hull, London, Southampton, Plym- 


ENGLAND 




outh, Bristol, and Liverpool are all situ¬ 
ated on tidal rivers of this sort at or near 
the Head of navigation. 

Agriculture. The soil of England is 
exceedingly rich. Grasses grow luxuriant¬ 
ly. The country is clothed almost the year 
around with a carpet of living green. Al¬ 
though the climate is too cool to permit the 
raising of Indian corn, England is one of 
the finest stock-raising countries in the 
world. Our domestic animals are descend¬ 
ed chiefly from those of England. The 
Berkshire, the Essex, and the ancestors of 
the Chester-white hogs; the Devon, the 
Hereford, the Durham, and the Short¬ 
horn cattle; the black-faced Shropshire, 
the long-wooled Cotswold, the Lincoln, the 
Leicester, the Cheviot, and the Southdown 
breeds of sheep are all from England. 
Aside from melons, Indian corn, and trop¬ 
ical productions, almost every field crop, 
vegetable, and fruit produced in the United 
States is raised in England. The chief 
field crops are wheat, barley, oats, beans, 
peas, potatoes, and turnips. Peas are an 
important fodder crop. Turnips take the 
'place largely of corn. 

Minerals. The mineral wealth is very 
great. The ancient navigators of Tyre vis¬ 
ited the shores of Britain for the sake of 
obtaining tin. Enormous measures of coal 
underlie a large part of the country. Iron 
ore of excellent quality is found in abun¬ 
dance. Lead, copper, and zinc are obtained 
also. Sandstone, slate, limestone, and 
granite are the chief building stones. There 
are large beds of excellent potter’s clay. 

Population. The natural productions 
of England are so varied and abundant, 
the soil is so fertile, and the climate so 
healthful, that it is safe to say no other 
portion of the globe is better adapted to 
maintain a dense population in comfort. 
The number of inhabitants at the begin¬ 
ning of the twentieth century amounted to 
over 32,000,000. With London, the larg¬ 
est city in the world, at the head of the 
list, there are thirty towns having a popu¬ 
lation of over 100,000 people each. Bir¬ 
mingham leads in the manufacture of 
steel; Manchester, in cotton; Bradford, in 
woolens; and Leeds, in linen. 

Productive as the country is, however, 


it would be impossible to maintain this 
enormous population without outside help. 
The area of England is somewhat less than 
that of Alabama. The population exceeds 
by a third that of our Atlantic States from 
Maine to Florida inclusive. The average 
population is 440 to the square mile,—far 
more than the land can employ or feed. 
The surplus population is employed in 
manufacturing and in commerce. England 
buys immense quantities of wool, cotton, 
and silk in all parts of the globe where 
these articles are produced. 

Commerce. According to the States¬ 
man’s Year Book, England with the other 
countries that make up the United King¬ 
dom, buys abroad and imports the incred¬ 
ible amount of 2,000,000,000 pounds of 
cotton and about half as much wool every 
year; 227,000,000 tons of coal and 13,000,- 
000 tons of iron are mined annually. About 
9,000,000 people work for wages, turning 
the iron, cotton, and wool into utensils, 
tools, machinery, cloth, and clothing. Im¬ 
mense quantities of wheat, corn, flour, 
meat, coffee, sugar, tea, rice, butter, cheese, 
and eggs are bought in foreign countries 
and brought home to supply this indus¬ 
trial population with food. 

Nearly 2,000,000 people are engaged in 
commerce. The English are the great car¬ 
riers of the world. In 1908 there were 
over 5,000 sailing vessels and nearly as 
many steam vessels doing business at Eng¬ 
lish ports. About one-fourth of the food 
supply and raw materials needed is pur¬ 
chased in the United States; about one- 
seventh of the British goods sent abroad 
is sold in the United States. 

England with the rest of the United 
Kingdom is what is called a free trading 
country. The ships of all nations are per¬ 
mitted to land their cargoes without pay¬ 
ing duties. Goods shipped out of the coun¬ 
try also go free. In order to raise money 
for the expenses of the government cer¬ 
tain exceptions are made. Chicory, cocoa, 
coffee, dried fruits, spirits, tea, sugar, to¬ 
bacco, and wine pay a duty on entering 
the country. One of the reasons why 
manufacturing is carried on to such an 
advantage in England is the abundant sup¬ 
ply of cheap coal. The rate at which it 



William Shakespeare. 


George Noel Gordon Lord Byron. 



Percy Bysshe Shelley. 


Sir Walter Scott. 



Charles Dickens. 


Rudyard Kipling. 


ENGLISH WRITERS 





































ENGLAND 


is being mined and consumed, however, has 
caused a fear lest the supply be exhausted. 
In order to discourage the shipment of 
coal abroad an export duty has been placed 
on it. 

Fisheries. The '•fisheries are also an 
important industry. Over 100,000 people 
are employed in them. Over half a million 
tons of fresh fish are landed, chiefly along 
the eastern coast, annually. The total 
catch is worth about $30,000,000 a year. 

Rural England. Although land is 
valuable for agricultural purposes, about 
one acre out of twenty is covered with tim¬ 
ber. A large part of the country is owned 
by the nobility and others of large income 
who do not feel the necessity of close till¬ 
age. Footpaths through magnificent wood¬ 
ed parks, through meadows, and along 
streams make England one of the most de¬ 
lightful countries in the world for ex¬ 
cursions on foot. The roads are well kept; 
the hedges are neatly trimmed; the front 
dooryards of the peasantry are full of 
flowers. The villages are neat and pic¬ 
turesque. Comfortable inns are found ev¬ 
erywhere. The large manufacturing 
towns have, of course, squalid, untidy quar¬ 
ters, but it is hard to imagine a country 
more attractive and delightfully pictur¬ 
esque than rural England. 

Public Utilities. As might be ex¬ 
pected in an old country, the roads are ex¬ 
cellent. Free rural delivery is quite com¬ 
plete. A. system of parcels post managed 
by the government takes the place of our 
express companies. Packages are carried 
by the mail carts at a ridiculously low 
price. In 1910 the postoffice department 
delivered 97,800,000 parcels in England 
and Wales. Railroads are built much 
more substantially than in this country. In 
fact, the English locomotive could not 
operate on our irregular road beds. The 
passenger cars are divided into compart¬ 
ments entered from the side. These com¬ 
partments are furnished in different styles 
called first, second, and third class. A tick¬ 
et for a first class compartment costs twice 
as much as one for a third. An overhead 
foot bridge is to be found at every coun¬ 
try station. People are not allowed to 
cross on the tracks, even though no trains 


are in sight. In addition to roads and rail¬ 
ways, the country is provided with a net¬ 
work of canals, having a total length of 
over 3,000 miles. The largest is the Man¬ 
chester ship canal. It is 25 miles in length, 
26 feet in depth, and 120 feet wide at the 
bottom. 

England is known by many names. Al¬ 
bion, from the Latin albus, has reference 
to the whiteness of the chalk cliffs. Eng¬ 
land is held to mean angle land, though 
some claim that the first syllable means 
meadow. 

Statistics. The following are the lat¬ 
est to be had from trustworthy sources: 


Area, square miles . 50,324 

Population (1911) . 34,047,659 

London . 7,537,196 

Birmingham . 570,113 

Bradford . 295,865 

Bristol . 382,550 

Leeds . 490,985 

Leicester . 248,374 

Liverpool . 767,606 

Manchester . 716,354 

Newcastle . 285,951 

Sheffield . 478,763 

Number counties . 42 

Members House of Lords. 500 

Members House of Commons . 495 

Salary of King George . $2,350,000 

Acres of improved land. 10,500,000 

Forests, acres . 1,715,000 

Productions— 

Wheat, bushels. 52,000,000 

Oats, bushels . 82,470,000 

Barley, bushels . 48,000,000 

Rye, bushels . 2,000,000 

Potatoes, bushels . 80,000,000 

Wool, pounds . 85,000,000 

Domestic Animals— 

Horses . 1,200,000 

Cattle . 4,500,000 

Sheep . 18,030,000 

Goats . 200,000 

Swine . 2,225,000 

Cotton factories . 2,200 

Coal mined, tons . 190,000,000 

Mineral products.$448,000,000 


THE RULERS OF ENGLAND. 

THE SAXON LINE. 

Egbert, King of the West Saxons, commonly 
called the first king of England, A. D. 827—- 
836. 

Ethelwolf, 836—857. 

Ethelred, 857—871. 

Alfred the Great, 871—901. 

Edward, 901—925. 

Athelstan, 925—941. 

Edmund, 941—948. 







































ENGLISH—ENGRAVING 


Edred, 94S—955. 

Edwy, 955—959. 

Edgar the Peaceable, 959—975. 

Edward II, 975—979. 

Ethelred the Unready, 979—1016. 

Edmund Ironsides, 1016—1017. 

THE DANISH LINE. 

Canute the Great, 1017—1035. 

Harold, 1035—1039. 

Hardicanute, 1039—1041. 

THE SAXON LINE RESTORED. 

Edward the Confessor, 1041—1066. 

Harold, 1066. 

THE NORMAN LINE. 

William the Conqueror, 1066—1087. 

William II (Rufus), 1087—1100. 

Henry I, 1100—1135. 

Stephen of Blois, 1135—1154. 

THE PLANTAGENETS 

Henry II, 1154—1189. 

Richard I, 1189—1199. 

John, 1199—1216. 

Henry III, 1216—1272. 

Edward I, 1272—1307. 

Edward II, 1307—1327. 

Edward III, 1327—1377. 

Richard II, 1377—1399. 

Henry IV, 1399—1413. 

Henry V, 1413—1422. 

Henry VI, 1422—1461. 

Edward IV, 1461—1483. 

Edward V, 1483. 

Richard III, 1483—1485. 

THE TUDORS. 

Henry VII, 1485—1509. 

Henry VIII, 1509—1547. 

Edward VI, 1547—1553. 

Mary, 1553—1558. 

Elizabeth, 1558—1603. 

THE STUARTS. 

James I, 1603—1625. 

Charles I, 1625—1649. 

THE COMMONWEALTH, 1649—1660. 
THE STUARTS AFTER THE RESTORATION. 

Charles II, 1660—1685. 

James II, 1685—1688. 

THE HOUSE OF NASSAU. 

William III, 1688—1702. 
and Mary (died 1694). 

THE LAST OF THE STUARTS. 

Anne, 1702—1714. 

THE HOUSE OF BRUNSWICK. 

George I, 1714—1727. 

George II, 1727—1760. 

George III, 1760—1820. 

George IV, 1820—1830. 

William IV, 1830—1837. 

Victoria, 1837—1901. 

Edward VII, 1901-1910. 

George V, 1910— 


English, Thomas Dunn (1819-1902), 

an American poet and novelist. He was 
born at Philadelphia. He was educated 
for a physician and afterward for the law. 
His novels include Walter Woolf e, Jacob 
Schuyler’s Millions, and Ambrose Fecit. 
He is the author also of American Ballads 
and Boys’ Book of Battle Lyrics. He is 
best known for the popular song, Ben Bolt. 

English Channel, an arm of the At¬ 
lantic lying between England and France. 
It communicates with the North Sea 
through the Strait of Dover, twenty-one 
miles wide. The channel is about 150 
miles wide at the Atlantic shoulder. The 
English Channel has played an important 
part in commerce and in naval warfare. 

English Language. See Language. 

English Literature. See Literature. 

Engraving, a method of picture mak¬ 
ing. Pictures printed from engraved plates 
are also called engravings. There are two 
distinct kinds of engravings, wood engrav¬ 
ings and engravings on copper or steel. 

The wood engraver chooses a block of 
wood, preferably boxwood, cut across the 
grain, that is, so that the surface is com¬ 
posed of the ends of the fibers. The artist 
draws his picture directly on the wood, or 
else it is copied from his drawing. The 
white wood is then cut away, so that the 
lines of the picture stand up like type. 
The block thus prepared is then set in a 
press and used to print from. In a wood 
engraving, the lines are pressed into the 
paper like the letters printed with type. 
Wood engraving is as old as the art of 
printing. Indeed, it is supposed to have 
suggested type. The black cuts and the 
large initials of early books were printed 
usually from wooden blocks. Wood en¬ 
graving took a fresh start in the latter part 
of the nineteenth century. The engravers 
employed on the Century magazine gave 
the United States an enviable reputation in 
this particular branch of art. The wood 
cuts that appeared in the London Punch 
were considered creditable. 

Steel and copper engravings are produced 
by a totally different method. If the read¬ 
er will consult the article on etching, he 
may find that the etcher uses a light needle 
with which to remove soft, yielding wax 


ENID—ENSILAGE 


from the surface of his plate, and that the 
lines are bitten in by nitric acid; but the 
engraver on steel or copper cuts his lines 
with a sharp steel instrument called a bur¬ 
in or graver. It is guided somewhat like a 
pen, but is pushed through the tough metal 
by the palm of the hand resting on the 
handle. The engraver pushes his tool from 
him. Under a microscope an engraved 
plate is seen to be covered by what to a 
novice would' seem to be a tangled mass 
of meaningless lines, dots and diamonds, 
but in reality, the work is systematic. Long 
parallel lines give an atmospheric impres¬ 
sion. If crossed at right angles, they give 
a darker tone. Lines crossed obliquely by 
other lines are used to represent drapery, 
clothing, and other textures. Delicate, 
curving, parallel lines are used to delineate 
features, or a series of dots following a 
curve may be used to secure the same ef¬ 
fect. A human head may be engraved by 
a single line led around and around with 
skill. 

As in the case of an etching, the ink 
lies in furrows. When an engraving is pro¬ 
duced by this method the lines are ridges 
instead of impressions. Naturally, the 
sharpest, clearest pictures are obtained be¬ 
fore the plate is worn. The pictures of the 
first series are called artist’s proofs. The 
second are simply proofs, and those printed 
later are the engravings of the ordinary 
trade. An artist’s proof from the plate of 
a celebrated engraver brings an enormous 
price. This may be understood the more 
readily when we learn that an artist re¬ 
quires to spend years on a large engraving, 
and that the artist’s proofs are few in num¬ 
ber and cannot be duplicated. 

See Counterfeiting. 

Enid. See Idylls of the King. 

Enoch Arden, e'nok ar'den, a narrative 
poem by Alfred Tennyson, published in 
1864. Tennyson has written no poem, un¬ 
less it be The Charge of the Light Brigade, 
which is so popular with all classes of peo¬ 
ple as is Enoch Arden. Enoch Arden is 
a sailor who is shipwrecked,—cast away 
on an island. After years of loneliness he 
is rescued, and returns to find his wife 
married to an old friend. For her sake 
Enoch does not disclose himself. He dies 


brokenhearted. The poem is a finished and 
beautiful picture of humble but heroic 
lives. The passages descriptive of Enoch’s 
renunciation are pathetic: 

Now when the dead man come to life beheld 
His wife his wife no more, and saw the babe 
Hers, yet not his, upon the father’s knee, 

And all the warmth, the peace, the happiness, 
And his own children tall and beautiful, 

And him, that other, reigning in his place, 

Lord of his rights and of his children’s love,— 


He therefore turning softly like a thief, 
Lest the harsh shingle should grate underfoot, 
And feeling all along the garden wall, 

Lest he should swoon and tumble and be found. 
Crept to the gate, and open’d it, and closed, 

As lightly as a sick man’s chamber door, 

Behind him, and came out upon the waste. 


Then the third night after this, 

While Enoch slumber’d motionless and pale, 

And Miriam watch’d and dozed at intervals. 
There came so loud a calling of the sea, 

That all the houses in the haven rang. 

He woke, he rose, he spread his arms abroad, 
Crying with a loud voice, “A sail! a sail! 

I am saved and so fell back and spoke no more. 

So past the strong heroic soul away. 

And when they buried him the little port 
Had seldom seen a costlier funeral. 

Ensilage, in agriculture, fodder pre¬ 
served in a green state. In the ordinary 
use of the word, ensilage is canned corn 
fodder. Any forage plant may be packed 
for ensilage, but green corn, not quite ar¬ 
rived at maturity, is preferred. A silo or 
pit may be built of any air-tight material. 
Wood is the material most generally used. 
Of late concrete is finding favor. A com¬ 
mon wooden silo is of circular form, like 
a well. The deeper the silo the better. 
The fodder is chopped or shredded, and is 
filled in from the top. Tramping, especial¬ 
ly around the edges, facilitates settling. A 
mass of fodder packed in this way is pro¬ 
tected from the bacteria of decay just as 
canned vegetables are protected by the tin 
of the can. The ensilage cures in its own 
juice and affords green, succulent feed when 
pastures are bare. The silo is to the fod¬ 
der field and the barn what the tin can is 
to the vegetable garden and the pantry. 
Cattle are as fond of good ensilage as 
people are of canned vegetables. Ensilage 
has especial value as food for milk cows. 
Like green pasture, it increases the flow of 
milk. 








ENTAIL—EPHESUS 


Some writers are of opinion that silos, 
in the form of pits, were known to the an¬ 
cient Persians and Romans. Several of the 
European nations have understood the val¬ 
ue of pits for green fodder. The scien¬ 
tific silo was first worked out in France. 
The first American silo is thought to have 
been built in Maryland in 1876. 

Entail. See Land Tenure. 

Entomology, the study of insects. 
Packard states that insects comprise four- 
fifths by weight of the animal kingdom. 
250,000 species of insects have been named 
and placed in museums. The total number 
is supposed to reach nearly 2,000,000. The 
study of insects is an important one, and 
has already saved the people of America 
many hundreds of millions of dollars. An 
excellent book for beginners is Comstock’s 
Manual for the Study of Insects. See In¬ 
sects. 

Envelope, en'vel-op, a paper pocket 
used chiefly for inclosing a letter. It is 
sealed usually by means of a flap or folded 
portion, faced at its edge with mucilage. 
As late as 1845 letters were folded so as 
to leave an unwritten portion outside for 
the stamp and address. They were sealed 
with wax. Envelopes did not come into 
general use earlier than the middle of the 
nineteenth century. At first they were 
made by hand, and were comparatively ex¬ 
pensive. Since the invention of special 
machinery an entire ream of paper is cut 
into suitable pieces by a single motion of 
a sharp edged die. The mucilage is ap¬ 
plied, the folding is done, and the envel¬ 
opes are packed, all by machinery. It is 
estimated that a single machine, well man¬ 
aged, will turn out 50,000 envelopes in 
a single day. The total consumption of 
envelopes in the United States is between 
three and four billion a year. The stamp¬ 
ed envelopes sold by the government are 
made under contract in but one or two 
factories, where they are guarded with the 
utmost care. The government furnishes 
not less than half a billion stamped en¬ 
velopes annually. 

Eos. See Aurora. 

Epaminondas, e-pam-i-non'das (418- 
362 B. C.), a famous Greek general. He 
was a native of Thebes,—the greatest 
11-34 


statesman and military genius that city ever 
produced. By his military genius he en¬ 
abled Thebes to set aside Sparta, as Sparta 
had set aside Athens. The period of The¬ 
ban supremacy in Grecian affairs began 
with the battle of Leuctra in 371 B. C. The 
flower of the Spartan army had marched on 
Thebes—it matters little what the im¬ 
mediate pretext might be. The Spartans 
were drawn up as usual in battle array, 
eight or twelve men deep. Epaminondas 
hit upon the plan of massing his forces, 
fifty men deep, opposite the wing in which 
the king and the choicest soldiers of the 
Spartans were arrayed. A thin line of 
Thebans threatened the rest of the Spartan 
front, but came slowly into action. The 
Spartan wing was crushed by the heavy 
attack. The king and 400 men were slain, 
and the day was lost to the Spartans and 
the supremacy of Greece was lost to 
Sparta. In 362 the same military tactics 
won for Thebes the victory of Mantinea, 
but Epaminondas fell on the field of bat¬ 
tle, pierced with a javelin. He was told 
that he would die as soon as the javelin 
was extracted. Hearing that his army had 
won a complete victory, he drew out the 
javelin with his own hand, exclaiming, “I 
have lived long enough.” A monument 
was erected to mark the spot. See Thebes. 

Ephesus, ef'e-sus, an ancient city on 
the western coast of Asia Minor. It was 
the natural seaport of the kingdom of 
Lydia, the realm of wealthy King Croe¬ 
sus. It enjoyed an extensive commerce 
with Asia and Greece. An immense tem¬ 
ple to an Asiatic goddess was built here. 
She was the deity of fertility, the mother' 
of vegetation,—an embodiment of the pro¬ 
ductivity of the earth. Later, when Eph¬ 
esus became a Greek city, this goddess was 
confounded with Artemis or Diana. In 
the year 356 B. C., on the night of the 
birth of Alexander the Great, an individu¬ 
al set fire to this temple that his name 
might not be forgotten in the world. This 
edifice, evidently consisting largely of 
wood, was replaced by a far more splendid 
temple. The women of Ephesus sold their 
jewelry and neighboring towns sent con¬ 
tributions, so important was the temple 
considered. Alexander offered to pay the 


EPIC 


cost of its erection if he might be permitted 
to carve his name on the pediment, but his 
tender was rejected. When completed, 
the dimensions were 240 by 418 feet. The 
roof of marble tiles was supported by over 
a hundred sculptured marble columns. It 
was considered one of the seven wonders 
of the world. 

This temple served several purposes. A 
vast number of priests and artificers lived 
in its precincts engaged in acts of worship 
and in making shrines and images for sale 
to worshipers. A refugee from justice 
might not be arrested within the shelter of 
the temple, and might even venture safely 
to a certain distance marked by a stone 
wall. After the city passed into Roman 
control Mark Antony found difficulty in 
controlling the horde of thieves that took 
advantage of this asylum. 

The apostle Paul early established a 
Christian church at Ephesus. The Epistle 
to the Ephesians was a letter written, no 
doubt in his own handwriting, and sent 
to the church for the edification of the 
faithful. For some account of the rever¬ 
ence in which the temple was held and the 
excitement among the silversmiths, read 
Acts xix. A general council of the Catho¬ 
lic church was held at Ephesus 431 A. D. 
One hundred thirty-five bishops were pres¬ 
ent. The site is now occupied by a squalid 
village. 

If after the manner of men I have fought with 
beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth me, if the 
dead rise not? Let us eat and drink for tomor¬ 
row we die.—I Cor. xv: 32. 

Epic, a poem of length and complete¬ 
ness, of dignity in style and form, recount¬ 
ing the achievements of some hero. The 
name epic is from a Greek word signifying 
speech or discourse, but has come to be 
used to designate narrative poems of heroic 
character, as distinguished from those 
which are dramatic or lyrical. 

Epic poetry seems to fall naturally into 
two classes: 

1. The popular, or national epic, called 

also the epic of growth and the folk- 
epic. 

2. The literary, or artificial epic, called 

also the individual epic and the art 
epic. 


It will be seen that among primitive peo¬ 
ple many ballads, gests, or sagas would arise 
about some one hero, or concerning some 
one great event of common interest. A 
poet or a school of poets collects these 
songs and legends, and forms them into a 
complete whole, with more or less individ¬ 
ual polishing, reshaping, and addition of 
passages. The folk-epic—the Iliad, for 
example—is the result. In all truly na¬ 
tional epics, and in the greater of the art 
epics, the events described are represented 
as occurring under supernatural guidance. 
The literary or art epic is the entire pro¬ 
duction of an individual, but is of the char¬ 
acter of the popular epic, that is, it is an 
heroic narrative of elevated and finished 
style. To deserve the name epic, it 
must be built up about some great struc¬ 
tural theme or thought which is of univer¬ 
sal, or at least of national import. The 
great national epics of literature are the 
following: 


Greek. Iliad. 

German. Nibelungenlied. 

Anglo-Saxon... .Beowulf. 

Spanish. Poem of the Cid. 

Persian. Shah Nameh. 

Sanskrit. Ramayana, and Mahabharata. 

Finnish. Kalevala. 

French. Roland or Chanson de Roland. 

Among art epics the following may be 
mentioned: 

Greek. Odyssey. Homer. 

Roman. Aeneid. Virgil. 

Italian. Jerusalem Delivered. Tasso. 

English. Paradise Lost. Milton. 

Portuguese.. Lusiad. Camoens. 

German. M essias. Klopstock. 

Italian. Divine Comedy. Dante. 


American... .Hiawatha. Longfellow. 

Scholars have found difficulty in placing 
certain of these epics. The Iliad and the 
Shah Nameh seem to belong in both 
classes. Some authorities place the Odys¬ 
sey with the epics of growth. Epics are 
classified often according to their subject 
matter, as historical, sacred, heroic, etc., 
and poems which can hardly claim the 
name epic in its larger meaning are classed 
as some specific form of epic. For in¬ 
stance, Goethe’s Hermann and Dorothea is 
called a domestic epic. Pope’s Rape of the 
Lock and Butler’s Hudibras are called 
mock-epics. 
















EPICTETUS—EPICURUS 


See Iliad and Odyssey; Beowulf; Ni- 

BELUNGEN LlED ; ClD ; LITERATURE ; 

Aeneid; Camoens; Tasso; Chanson de 
Roland ; Milton ; Klopstock. 

Epictetus, ep-ik-te'tus, a Stoic philos¬ 
opher of Rome. He flourished during the 
latter half of the first century A. D. He 
was banished from Rome during the reign 
of Trajan. His sayings were taken down 
by a devoted follower and disciple. Such 
teachings as have not been lost inculcate 
the idea of immortality and breathe a 
calm spirit of resignation and piety not 
unlike that of the New Testament writers. 

SAYINGS OF EPICTETUS. 

Difficulties show what men are. 

Reason is not measured by size or height, but 
by principle. 

Were I a nightingale, I would act the part of 
a nightingale. 

Why, then, do you walk as if you had swal¬ 
lowed a ramrod? 

No great thing is created suddenly, any more 
than a bunch of grapes or a fig. 

What is the first business of one who studies 
philosophy? To part with self-conceit. 

He is unreasonable who is grieved at things 
which happen from the necessity of nature. 

Nothing is smaller than love of pleasure and 
love of gain and pride. Nothing is superior to 
magnanimity and gentleness and love of mankind 
and beneficence. 

What we ought not to do we should not even 
think of doing. 

No man is free who is not master of himself. 

Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is 
an impregnable fortress. 

Do not so much be ashamed of that disgrace 
which proceeds from men’s opinions as fly from 
that which comes from the truth. 

No man who loves money and pleasure and 
fame, also loves mankind, but only he who loves 
virtue. 

Epicurus, ep-i-ku'rus (341-270 B. C.), 
the founder of a Greek school of phi¬ 
losophy. His father, Neocles, was a 
schoolmaster, and there is a story that his 
mother practiced witchcraft. He studied 
and taught until about thirty-five years 
of age, when he purchased a garden in 
Athens, and therein established his school 
for philosophy. From this time until his 
death, he was the “loved and venerated 
head of a remarkable society.” 

He taught that pleasure is the chief 
good, explaining the statement by saying, 
“When we say that pleasure is the end 
of life, we mean by pleasure freedom of 


the body from pain and of the soul from 
anxiety.” He taught that the great evil 
is fear—fear of the gods, and fear of 
death. He attempted to rid men of this 
fear by teaching that the legends of my¬ 
thology were untrue. He claimed that, if 
gods existed at all, these “happy and im¬ 
perishable beings could have nothing to 
do with the affairs of the universe or of 
men.” As to death, he taught that the 
dissolution of the body involved that of 
the soul, so that death need not be feared. 
Virtue is not a good in itself, but is a 
means of happiness. Prudence, which 
means the wise avoidance of physical pain 
and anxiety of soul, is the great good. It 
is prudent to cultivate justice, temper¬ 
ance, friendship, and good fellowship. 

Epicurus’ philosphy, and possibly even 
more, his personality, attracted an im¬ 
mense number of followers, who remained 
loyal to him as long as he lived, and to 
his teachings after his death. It was a 
constant wonder to less popular sects why 
there were so many Epicureans. The 
members of the sect lived very simply. 
An inscription over the gate of Epicurus’ 
garden warned those who entered to expect 
no more sumptuous fare than barley bread 
and water. This, with a little wine, and, 
when they wished to “fare sumptuously,” 
some Cynthian cheese, formed their liv¬ 
ing. It is from a misunderstanding of 
their philosophy that the word Epicurean 
has come to be a synonym for the doc¬ 
trine of taking pleasure in eating and 
drinking, and that we say of food, in or¬ 
der to praise it, that it is fit for an epicure. 

Epicurus was a voluminous writer. Ac¬ 
cording to his biographer, Diogenes Laer¬ 
tius, he left 300 volumes. Three letters 
and a few sayings are all that remain of 
these works. His system of philosophy 
found followers in Egypt, Asia Minor, 
and in Rome. In the seventeenth century 
a revival of the Epicurean ideas became 
popular in France. Moliere, Rousseau, 
Voltaire, and other eminent Frenchmen 
professed these principles. 

SAYINGS OF EPICURUS. 

When we are, death is not; and when death 
is, we are not. 

We cannot live pleasantly without living wise¬ 
ly and nobly and righteously. 


EPIDERMIS—EPISCOPAL CHURCH 


Epidermis. See Skin. 

Epigoni. See Seven against Thebes. 

Epigram, ep'i-gram, originally, an in¬ 
scription placed on a tomb, temple door¬ 
way, statue, or triumphal arch. Naturally, 
bright sayings were chosen for such a 
purpose. The term has come to mean a 
bright thought tersely expressed, usually 
with a turn of wit. Words are used a 
little out of the ordinary meaning so as 
to create surprise. In general, any pun¬ 
gent way of saying a good thing is said 
to be epigrammatic. A good pun is an 
epigram. Many proverbs are epigrams. 
A few well worn examples are added: 

Language is the art of concealing thought. 

He was conspicuous by his absence. 

When you have nothing to say, say it. 

The obedient wife commands her husband. 

Sweet are the uses of adversity. 

Beauty when unadorned is adorned the most. 

The more we have, the less we spend. 

He is the richest who is content with the 
least. 

The more busy we are, the more leisure we 
have. 

The fastest colors are those that won’t run. 

The best way to contract debts is to pay them 

off. 

The misfortunes hardest to bear are those that 
never come. 

Under this stone my wife doth lie; 

She is at rest, and so am I. 

Epilepsy, ep-i-lep'sy, a disease of the 
brain. It is characterized by a loss of 
consciousness and muscular spasms. The 
ancients called it the “sacred disease,” 
fancying that one in an epileptic fit was 
taken possession of by a familiar spirit. 
In case of an attack there is little to be 
done, save to loosen the patient’s clothing 
and see that he comes to,no harm from 
falling. One subject to epilepsy is likely 
to suffer a loss of memory and to be¬ 
come despondent. 

Epimetheus, ep-i-me'thus, in Greek 
mythology, one of the Titans, brother of 
Prometheus. At the time of the creation 
of the world, the task of allotting to ani¬ 
mals and man such attributes and quali¬ 
fies as should make for their preservation 
and happiness was given to these two 
brothers. It fell to Epimetheus to dis¬ 
tribute, to Prometheus to oversee the work. 
Epimetheus gave courage to the lion, 
claws to the cat, a trunk to the elephant, 


a shell and long life to the turtle, sagacity 
to the fox, wings and talons to the eagle, 
and a keen eye and powerful legs to the 
ostrich. Prometheus cautioned his broth¬ 
er, but Epimetheus would not listen, and 
gave with a free hand. The consequence 
was that he ran short. When, last of all, 
man came for his apportionment, there 
was nothing left to give him. Epime¬ 
theus was greatly troubled, for it seemed 
a pity to leave so fine a creature to the 
mercy of the beasts. In his perplexity he 
resorted to his brother. Prometheus called 
on Minerva for aid, and with her help 
succeeded in lighting a torch at the chari¬ 
ot of the sun, thus bringing to man the gift 
of fire. With fire as his friend, he could 
live in any clime and could forge weapons 
with which to defend himself against the 
beasts. Zeus beheld from his throne a bright 
light among men. Learning that it was 
fire, and how man had obtained it, he was 
greatly enraged. He assembled the gods 
in council, and it was decided to create a 
new being who should be sent to man as 
a punishment. The gods called the new 
creature a woman, and vied with each oth¬ 
er in endowing her with gifts which should 
make her irresistible to man, and at the 
same time cause him no end of trouble. 
They named her Pandora, the all-gifted, 
and offered her to Epimetheus, who ac¬ 
cepted the gift with delight, although 
again warned by his more cautious brother. 
Perhaps the gods foresaw that she would 
let loose from her box all the troubles, 
but surely they would not have sent her 
as a punishment, had they known that 
with her, hope would come into the world. 
A somewhat different account of the gift 
of fire to man may be found under the 
heading Prometheus. See also Pandora. 
Epiphytes. See Air Plants. 

Episcopal Church, a popular name for 
the Church of England and for the Prot¬ 
estant Episcopal Church of the United 
States and elsewhere. In form, the char¬ 
acteristic feature of Episcopacy is govern¬ 
ment by means of a body of superior clergy 
called bishops. They are, it is claimed, 
the successors in a direct and unbroken 
line of the twelve apostles. A bishop may 
be consecrated only by a bishop. This 


EPITAPH 


article of belief is held also by the Coptic, 
Armenian, Greek, and Roman Catholic 
churches. Bishops appear to have been 
recognized universally until the time of the 
Protestant Reformation. The Moravians 
of Pennsylvania maintain a form of Epis¬ 
copacy, and claim also that their bishops 
are in an unbroken line of descent from the 
apostles. 

In England and Wales the Episcopal is 
the established church. It is supported by 
public taxation. The landholders who 
prefer some other form of worship are 
permitted to attend services of their 
own choice, but are not excused from pay¬ 
ing the church rates assessed against them. 
In this respect the system has points of 
resemblance to our system of raising 
funds for common schools. There are 
about 15,000,000 adherents of the Estab¬ 
lished Church in England and Wales— 
about half of the population. In local 
matters, such as paying expenses, provid¬ 
ing a church building, and the like, each 
church is governed by its own vestry of 
ratepayers. The form of worship and all 
spiritual matters are subject to the direc¬ 
tion of the bishop. There are two arch¬ 
bishops and twenty-nine bishops. All but 
four have seats in the House of Lords. A 
bishop’s assistant is called a dean. 

In case the income of the parish is large 
it is not infrequently assigned to some re¬ 
ligious order or to some layman whom the 
government desires to favor, while the pas¬ 
torate is filled by an appointment at a 
salary. This possible arrangement has 
been the subject of fierce discussion, and is 
one of the reasons for the great number of 
dissenters who have left the Church of 
England. In case the pastor receives the 
entire revenue raised for the purpose, he is 
called a rector. A clergyman serving on 
salary paid by the institution or person 
holding the living is called, by way of 
distinction, a vicar. An assistant to a 
rector or vicar, or one in charge of an 
outlying chapel in a large or populous 
parish, is called a curate. 

In matters of theological belief the 
Episcopalians are staunch I rinitarians and 
upholders of two sacraments: baptism and 
the Lord’s Supper. Nevertheless, there is 


considerable diversity of opinion. The wing 
of the church that exalts the prerogative of 
the bishop and makes much of the office, 
that is to say, the section of the church 
nearest Catholicism, is called High 
Church, the opposite wing is known as 
Low Church. Those who lean toward Uni- 
tarianism and similar unorthodox beliefs 
are said to be Broad Church in tendency. 

50 far as known, the first Church of 
England service in the New World w r as 
held on the coast of California in 1579 
by the chaplain of the flagship of Sir 
Francis Drake. The first congregation 
was established at Jamestown in 1607. 
There are now about 5,000 clergymen and 
3,000,000 adherents in the United States. 
The Episcopal form of worship is promi¬ 
nent in Canada, Australia, the cities of In¬ 
dia, and wherever else the British flag is 
seen. 

Epitaph, an inscription upon a tomb. 
Epitaphs were used by the ancient Egyp¬ 
tians, and by the Greeks and Romans. 
The tombs of the Romans were near the 
highways, and often their epitaphs com¬ 
menced with the injunction Sta viator! 
meaning “Stop, traveler!” Many such in¬ 
scriptions are very happy tributes. Among 
the best of them is found one in St. Paul’s, 
London, to its architect, Sir Christopher 
Wren: 

51 monumentum quaeris circumspice . 
“If you seek for his monument, look about 
you.” Old English churchyards are full 
of stones carved with quaint and often 
ludicrous epitaphs. This is found at Ed- 
worth : 

“Here lies father, mother, sister and I, 

We all died within the space of one year. 

They all be buried at Whimble except I 
And I be buried here.” 

The following admonition is quite com¬ 
mon in one form or another: 

“All you that read these lines 
Would stop awhile and think 

That I am in eternity 

And you are on the brink.” 

These lines were on little Stephen, a 
noted fiddler: 

“Stephen and Time 
Are now both even; 

Stephen beat time, 

Now time beats Stephen.” 


EPOCH—EQUINOXES 


Epoch. See Age. 

Epping (ep'ing) Forest, formerly an 
extensive tract of rough woodland sixteen 
miles northeast of London. It is now 
a region of villages and parks engaged 
largely in dairying. Queen Elizabeth had 
her hunting lodge here. It was custo¬ 
mary for many a year to turn a stag loose 
on Easter Monday to be hunted for the 
amusement of the public. A remnant of 
Epping Royal Forest, about 3,000 acres, 
was acquired in 1871 by the corporation of 
London as a public park and place of rec¬ 
reation. The purchase, enlargement, and 
reforesting cost the city about $3,000,000. 
There are yet many magnificent beech and 
oak trees. The park is easily reached by 
suburban trains, and is a favorite place for 
picnic parties from the city. Tennyson 
was living in this forest when he wrote 
his Talking Oak and Locksley Hall. 

Epsom, ep'sum, a small market town 
in Surrey, fifteen miles southwest of Lon¬ 
don. It has given its name to the famous 
Epsom salts, formerly manufactured there 
from the water of mineral springs found 
in the locality. This water is impregnated 
with sulphate of magnesium similar to 
that of Seidlitz waters. When evaporated 
the mineral substances crystallize in snow 
white rectangular prisms, or in flakes and 
granules. Epsom salts is a well known 
household remedy of disagreeable taste. 
A mile and a half south of the town 
is a plain called Epsom Downs, where 
horse races have been held since the day 
of Charles I. The famous Derby Day 
races are held here. See Derby. 

Epworth League, an organization of 
the young people of the Methodist church. 
It was formed in May, 1889, at Cleveland, 
Ohio, much on the model of the Christian 
Endeavor society. Members take the fol¬ 
lowing pledge: 

I will earnestly seek for myself, and do what 
I can to help others to attain, the highest New 
Testament standard of experience in life. I will 
abstain from all forms of worldly amusement for¬ 
bidden by the discipline of the Methodist Episco¬ 
pal church, and I will attend, as far as possible, 
the religious meetings of the chapter and the 
church, and take some active part in them. 

The society has extended its organiza¬ 
tion to many foreign countries, and now 


numbers about 2,000,000 members enrolled 
in nearly 30,000 societies. The general 
management is entrusted to a board of 
control. 

Equator, e-kwa'ter, in geography a 
great circle, every point of which is 90° 
from the poles, that is to say, midway be¬ 
tween them. It divides our earth into 
a northern and a southern hemisphere. 
The latitude of places, whether south or 
north, is reckoned from this circle. The 
equator is 7926.614 miles in diameter, or 
24,912 miles in circumference. Owing to 
the turning of the earth on its axis, a point 
on the equator has a rotary motion of 
1,000 miles an hour, but as the atmos¬ 
phere moves with the earth we do not 
notice the whirling. Twice a year day and 
night are equal the world over. They are 
always equal on the equator. At all 
times half of the equator is in light and 
half in darkness. A wrong impression 
prevails that the equator is the line of 
greatest heat on the globe. Three factors 
are to be considered. In the first place, 
the longest day is to be found north of 
the equator during the northern summer, 
and south of the equator during the north¬ 
ern winter. This fact in itself causes the 
line of greatest heat to shift back and 
forth from north to south, so that, even 
theoretically, it coincides with the equator 
only at the fall and spring equinoxes. Fur¬ 
thermore, in crossing the mountains of 
East Africa, the equator rises into a cool 
region, and the Andes of Ecuador carry it 
up into a region of perpetual ice and 
snow, as cold as any point on the Arctic 
Circle. The trade winds of the southern 
hemisphere are the stronger and push back 
the northern winds, carrying the belt of 
calm and heat north of the mathematical 
equator. The equator should be associated 
with the idea of heat, therefore, in a modi¬ 
fied way. In fact, the isotherm of greatest 
heat crosses the equator twice, but does 
not coincide with it at any time. 

Equinoxes (equal night), two points 
in the sun’s apparent path when day and 
night are equal. At midwinter our north¬ 
ern day is short and our night is long. The 
day grows longer and the night shorter un¬ 
til on or about March 21st, when day and 



EQUITY—ERASMUS 


night are everywhere equal. This is the ver¬ 
nal equinox. The day continues to grow 
longer and the night shorter until midsum¬ 
mer, when the day begins to lose and the 
night to gain until, on or about September 
22d, day and night are again everywhere 
equal. This is the autumnal equinox. The 
equator has a perpetual equinox; parts not 
on the equator have equal day and night 
but twice a year. The farther we recede 
from the equator, the greater the inequality 
between night and day. The equinoxes of 
the two hemispheres occur on the same 
date. Our vernal equinox is the autumnal 
equinox of Australia and Argentina. 

Equity. See Law.. 

Erasmus (1467-1536), a noted Dutch 
scholar and theologian. He was a na¬ 
tive of Rotterdam; he died at Basel. His 
father and mother died young, and left 
him to the charity of others. His story is 
one of poverty and patronage, yet of mar¬ 
velous independence. He was a chorister 
boy in the Cathedral of Utrecht. He was 
a talented lad. He entered a monastery in 
search of learning, but found the monks 
“coarse, ignorant, and illiterate.” The 
Bishop .of Cambray made Erasmus his sec¬ 
retary, and later sent him to cheap lodg¬ 
ings at the University of Paris, of which 
he says, “I carried away nothing but a 
body infected with disease and a plentiful 
supply of vermin.” Erasmus escaped from 
dire poverty by taking up the work of 
tutoring. He went to England in 1497 
with a young Lord Mont joy.- For a num¬ 
ber of years he eked out an existence by 
tutoring, traveling, and studying, writing 
and editing. He was at Cambridge, Ox¬ 
ford, Paris, Orleans, Louvain, Brussels, 
Bologna, Turin, Padua, Siena, and Rome. 
At Venice he supervised the printing of 
a book of his own on the Aldine Press. As 
his reputation for learning and eloquence 
grew, the sons of the powerful were eager 
to be known as his pupils. He received 
handsome fees for delivering Latin orations 
at coronations, receptions, and other pub¬ 
lic occasions. Influential people opened 
their doors. 

Erasmus held various professorships, 
including the chair of Greek at Cambridge, 
but he was restless. In 1520 he settled 


down at Basel, then the center of the 
German book trade. Here he spent eight 
years editing Latin books, particularly the 
works of the Church Fathers—Jerome, 
Athanasius, Augustine, Origen, etc. After 
Basel, he lived in Freiburg, then back to 
Basel again, where he died. 

Erasmus sat to Holbein for several por¬ 
traits. A contemporary describes him as 
follows: “In stature not tall, but not 
noticeably short; in figure well built and 
graceful; of an extremely delicate consti¬ 
tution, sensitive to the slightest changes of 
climate, food, or drink. Elis complexion 
was fair; light blue eyes, and yellowish 
hair. Though his voice was weak, his 
enunciation was distinct; the expression of 
his face cheerful; his manner and conver¬ 
sation polished, affable, even charming.” 

Although he saw dire poverty in his 
youth, Erasmus was a man of elegant 
tastes, and was dependent upon the crea¬ 
ture comforts of this world. The pope 
absolved him from his obligations as a 
monk. He dressed in the finest and softest 
clothing. In his travels, which were taken 
usually on horseback, he required the ser¬ 
vices of an attendant with an extra mule 
to carry clothing and table delicacies. 

Erasmus’ early work as a tutor of 
young men gave him a hold on public 
affairs. His scholarship brought him into 
intimate relationship with all the universi¬ 
ties of the day. His service as an editor of 
the church classics brought him into favor 
with church authorities who had a love 
for learning; yet he could never be pre¬ 
vailed upon to take a position of impor¬ 
tance for any length of time. Al¬ 
though a pensioner of Charles V, and in 
receipt of money from other crowned heads 
of Europe, he did not hesitate to write, 
“the people build cities, princes pull them 
down; the industry of the citizens creates 
wealth for rapacious lords to plunder; 
.plebeian magistrates pass good laws for 
kings to violate; the people love peace and 
their rulers stir up war.” 

Erasmus holds a singular position. He 
was a man of thought, not of action. Al¬ 
though he lived in the stirring times of 
the Protestant Reformation he could not be 
prevailed upon to take sides. He lashed 






ERATO—ERG 


the priests, monks, and convents; but he 
stood by the church. The motto was cur¬ 
rent in his lifetime that “Erasmus laid the 
egg and Luther hatched it,” but Erasmus 
wished to reform the church, not to dis¬ 
rupt it. Luther and Melanchthon tried in 
vain to draw Erasmus into the Revolution¬ 
ary movement. Luther’s writings were of¬ 
fensive. Erasmus considered Luther’s 
pamphlets vulgar and exaggerated. On 
the other hand, the pope and Wolsey and 
Henry VIII,—this before the English Ref¬ 
ormation,—tried to induce Erasmus to 
condemn Luther and to declare against the 
German Reformation, but again Erasmus 
was unwilling to take sides. 

He appears to have enjoyed an inde¬ 
pendence that permitted him to direct the 
shafts of his wit and satire at the abuses 
and scandals of the day, whether Protes¬ 
tant or Catholic. Nevertheless, he died 
a member of the church of his childhood. 
Erasmus wrote modern Latin, which in his 
day was a living and spoken tongue. He 
was familiar with English, French, and 
German; but he preferred to converse in 
Latin. It is not too much to say that he 
was the first man of letters of his day. 
Had he taken a positive side in the contro¬ 
versies then raging, he would have been 
extolled by one party or the other. As 
the case rests, Erasmus dropped, as it were, 
between Catholicism and Protestantism, 
and he is now little read. 

Erato, er'a-to, in classical mythology 
the muse of lyric poetry. She is repre¬ 
sented in art with a lyre in her hands. 
Erato presided over the songs of lovers. 
Her name is from the Greek word to love. 
See Muses. 

Erebus, er'e-bus, in Greek mythology, 
the son of Chaos and brother of Night 
The word signifies impenetrable darkness, 
and was used to designate the gloomy 
cavern which must be traversed before the 
shades reached Hades. In the Odyssey 
and by later writers it is used as synony¬ 
mous with Hades. The word has come to 
be symbolical of darkness. “Dark as Ere¬ 
bus,” says Shakespeare. 

Erebus, a noted Antarctic volcano. It 
stands in latitude 78° S.; longitude, 170° 
E. Its snow-clad slopes rise from the border 


of the great ice barrier to the crater four¬ 
teen miles inland and 13,000 feet above 
th^ level of the sea. It is an active vol¬ 
cano lighting up the Antarctic night with 
a fitful glow heightened by frequent bursts 
of flame from the crater. The mountain has 
been built up by outpourings of lava. No 
flow has occurred in recent times, but a 
column of steam shoots up at intervals of 
time to a height of nearly a mile, and 
trails away in a cloud before the wind. 
The crater is described as 900 feet in 
depth and half a mile wide. Clouds of 
steam fill the bowl. The observations 
can be made only when a favoring breeze 
carries the steam aside or whips the crater 
empty. The atmosphere is redolent of 
sulphur. Feldspar crystals, two or three 
inches in length, many of them perfect 
in outline, lie strewn about. They all 
were once imbedded in pumice stone, but, 
as the latter disintegrated, it was blown 
away in the form of dust, leaving these 
beautiful crystals behind. The air is so 
cold that huge cones of ice form about the 
fissures from which steam issues. 

Erechtheum, e-rek-the'um, the temple 
of Erechtheus, a Greek demi-god, on the 
Acropolis at Athens. It was built to hon¬ 
or two other Greek deities also, Poseidon, 
the sea-god, and Athene, the goddess of 
wisdom. In the temple were preserved 
the oldest existing statues of that goddess 
and the sacred olive-tree she created as 
a gift to the city. The building, which was 
rebuilt in the Peloponnesian War, is one of 
the finest examples we have of Greek ar¬ 
chitecture. It has three distinct chapels, one 
for each deity, and the famous porch of 
the caryatides, where in place of columns 
are great figures of women or caryatides, 
supporting the capitals. See Acropolis. 

Erg, the absolute unit of work or of 
energy derived from the fundamental units 
of the metric system. It is the work done 
by one dyne acting through a centimeter of 
space. The foot-poundal, or the work 
done by a poundal through a foot, is the 
English unit. These, particularly the erg, 
are too small for ordinary use. The practi¬ 
cal or gravitational units in the respective 
systems are the kilogram-meter and the 
foot-pound whose names are self-explana- 




ERGOT—ERIE 


tory. The former equals 98,000,000 ergs. 
See Dyne. 

Ergot, er'got, a kind of fungus that 
devours and finally replaces the seeds of 
rye and other plants. Like other fungi, 
ergot is propagated by means of spores 
carried by the winds or by insects. It is 
thought that the sap of a plant may carry 
spores upward from the earth to the young 
seed where they lodge and multiply. A 
head of rye affected with ergot turns 
brown, then black as the growth matures. 
Grasses related to rye are particularly sub¬ 
ject to attack. Ergot is allied to corn 
smut and other fungi that grow in starchy 
grains. Cattle eating ergotty rye are likely 
to be poisoned. The natives of Russia, 
where rye is the chief food, are sometimes 
poisoned by rye ergot. The fungus produc¬ 
es a strong oil, not well understood, except 
that it has a powerful medicinal effect. 
Taken as a remedy it causes the heart and 
other involuntary muscles to contract with 
sudden spasms. The ordinary ergot of 
the drugstore consists of grain-like purple 
masses, from one-half to three-fourths of 
an inch in length, not unlike large grains 
of rye in shape. It is obtained chiefly 
from Russia and Spain. See Fungus. 

Eric the Red, the founder of a Norse 
settlement in Greenland. He was born in 
Norway about 950. According to the cur¬ 
rent account, tradition rather than history, 
he fled from Norway to Iceland on a 
charge of murder. He was driven from 
Iceland for a similar outrage. He found 
a sheltered harbor in Greenland, but re¬ 
turned after three years to Iceland, whence 
he led a band of his followers to Green¬ 
land and founded a permanent settlement 
about 985. His son Leif Ericson intro¬ 
duced Christianity. The colony existed 
about 400 years, and was then wiped out 
by the Black Death. 

Ericson, Leif, lef, an Icelandic navi¬ 
gator. According to the Icelandic sagas, 
he was the son of Eric the Red. He sailed 
early in the eleventh century to some part 
of the coast of North America, and estab¬ 
lished a colony which he called Vinland 
because of the growth of wild grape vines. 
A statue in his honor adorns Common¬ 
wealth Avenue, Boston. See Vinland. 


Ericsson, er'ik-son, John (1803-1889), 
a noted inventor. He was a native of 
Sweden. After reaching young manhood 
and serving a term in the army, he left the 
service and established himself as an in¬ 
ventor. Among other useful appliances 
was a contrivance for regulating the aim 
of a cannon on a pitching ship. Another 
was a successful hot air engine, and 
still a third invention was the screw propel¬ 
ler, now used almost universally on steam¬ 
ships. It consists essentially of a series 
of slanting blades attached to one end of 
a shaft. The propeller rests in the water 
behind the ship. The shaft runs through 
the hold of the ship to the machinery, 
where it is driven by steam power. As 
the shaft revolves, the screw propeller 
turns with it, thrusting the ship forward 
with a powerful stroke. Most ships are 
provided with a pair of twin propellers. 
In 1839 Ericsson came to the United 
States. His fame rests on the construc¬ 
tion of the iron-clad, Monitor. It was 
built for the United States just in time to 
meet the Confederate iron-clad, Merrimac, 
in Hampton Roads, March 9, 1862. At 
his death the United States government 
sent an armed cruiser to convey his re¬ 
mains to Sweden. See Monitor ; Battle¬ 
ship. 

Erie, a city of Pennsylvania, noted for 
its many manufactures and its harbor, the 
finest on Lake Erie. Commodore Perry 
made his headquarters here in the War of 
1812, and built his famous fleet in the 
harbor. It is the only lake port in the 
state, and is the nucleus of a great water 
traffic besides being entered by five rail¬ 
roads. Among its manufactures are rub¬ 
ber goods, silk, leather, lumber, flour, pa¬ 
per, farm implements, boilers, forgings, 
engines, etc. It ships great quantities of 
coal to Duluth, to which city boats ply 
three times a week, and much iron ore and 
petroleum to other points. 

Erie is on a bluff commanding a grand 
view of Presque Isle Bay, behind Presque 
Island, which protects the harbor. Several 
beautiful parks grace the city, and many 
handsome buildings. Some of them are 
the Court House, a Home for the Friend¬ 
less, a United States Marine Hospital, the 


ERIE—ERMINE 


Public Library, the Erie Club, St. Vin¬ 
cent’s Hospital, State Soldiers and Sailors’ 
Home, Hamot Hospital, the Y. M. C. A. 
building and the government building con¬ 
taining the postoffice and the custom-house. 
Its population in 1910 was 66,525. 

Erie, e'ri, one of the Great Lakes of 
North America. Lake Erie lies next above 
Lake Ontario. It receives the waters of 
Lake Huron through the Detroit River. 
Its greatest length is 240 miles. Its great¬ 
est width, 50 miles. Its area is 9,900 
square miles. Ordinarily its surface is 
570 feet above sea level. The greatest 
depth of Lake Erie is 210 feet. Its av¬ 
erage depth is 100 feet. It is the one of 
the Great Lakes whose bottom does not 
extend below the level of the sea. It 
discharges its waters through the Niagara 
River to Lake Ontario. The southern coast 
has a number of excellent harbors, includ¬ 
ing those at Buffalo, Erie, Cleveland, San¬ 
dusky, and Toledo. Heavy storms create 
powerful undercurrents that render the 
navigation of the lake peculiarly danger¬ 
ous. When a storm comes up on Lake 
Erie, captains of all but the largest boats 
aim to run for a place of shelter. Lake 
Erie is connected with Lake Ontario by 
the famous Welland ship canal, and with 
the Hudson River by the Erie canal run¬ 
ning, by way of the Mohawk Valley, from 
Buffalo to Albany. 

Erie Canal, an important canal in the 
state of New York. It leads from Buf¬ 
falo on Lake Erie, through the Mohawk 
Valley, to the Hudson River at Albany. 
The Erie was constructed at state expense 
in 1817-26, largely through the determined 
efforts of Governor DeWitt Clinton and 
his political friends. The length of the 
canal is 387 miles. It is 70 feet wide 
at the bottom and is 7 feet deep. Buf¬ 
falo is 568 feet above Albany. There are 
72 locks. There is a lift at West Troy 
of 188 feet and another at Lockport of 
54 feet. Stone aqueducts carry the canal 
across the Mohawk twice. The original 
depth was four feet. The original cost 
was $7,602,000. Subsequent deepening 
and widening and other improvements 
totaled up to $52,540,800. Some scanda¬ 
lous contracts swelled the latter figures. 


The Erie Canal preceded railroads. A 
line of light packet boats drawn by horses 
at a round trot reduced the passenger 
schedule between Buffalo and Albany from 
the ten days required by stage service to 
three days and a half. The rate on freight 
drawn by long lines of teams was cut from 
$100 to $10, and later to $3 a ton. 
The canal did much to fill the valley of 
the Mohawk with settlers. It opened the 
way for emigrants bound westward and 
it formed a great highway for freight 
from the Northwest to the seaboard. The 
canal gave New York City an advantage 
over other Atlantic cities and did much to 
make it the metropolis of North America. 

In 1903 the legislature authorized the en¬ 
larging of the Erie Canal to a size capable 
of bearing barges and tugs. The work is 
nearing completion. It required the build¬ 
ing of many immense locks but when com¬ 
pleted will allow large barges to be trans¬ 
ported direct from New York to Duluth 
and Chicago. The total cost is estimated 
at $86,173,000. 

Erl-King, in German legend, a goblin 
or mythical being who haunts the Black 
Forest. The Erl-king is a malignant 
creature who entices children from their 
homes by promises or bright visions, and 
then destroys them. His influence upon 
all, young and old, is evil. Goethe’s 
ballad, Der Erlkonig, and its translations 
into English are familiar. The word, erl- 
king, is from the Danish, and means king 
of the elves. Herder’s translation of a 
Danish ballad introduced the Erl-king into 
Germany. 

Ermine, er'min, or Stoat, a slender, 
short-legged weasel, found in the northern 
parts of Europe, Siberia, and British 
America. Its fur is of a reddish brown 
in summer, changing to pure white in 
winter, with a black tip to the tail. The' 
pelt of the ermine commands a high price. 
In England it is used especially to line 
the official robes ot judges; hence the 
ermine has come to signify the judicial 
dignity. To soil the ermine, and to keep 
the ermine unspotted, are expressions re¬ 
ferring to the conduct of a judge in of¬ 
fice. Even in this country, where the 
judge dresses like other professional men, 


ERMINE—ESCORIAL 


we hear such expressions as that a judge 
ought not to drag the ermine through the 
mire of politics. As a fur, ermine is spot¬ 
less white, a quality to which Lowell re¬ 
fers in his First Snow Fall. 

Every pine, and fir, and hemlock 
Wore ermine, too dear for an earl. 

See Weasel. 

Ermine, or Ermyn Street, a Roman 
road leading northward from London, 
through Lincoln, to York, then to Ha¬ 
drian’s Wall. It left London by what 
became known as Bishopsgate. 

Eros, e'ros, in Greek mythology, the 
god of love. According to the account of 
Hesiod, Eros was the offspring of Chaos, 
brother to the goddess Gaea. Later ac¬ 
counts represent Eros as the son of Aphro¬ 
dite and Hermes. His characteristics, and 
the various stories which grew up about 
his name, were adopted by the Romans 
for their Cupid. See Cupid. 

Erosion, the process whereby, through 
the action of air and water, the products of 
rock decay are removed and the surface of 
the earth is worn down. Water has various 
rates of action upon different kinds of 
rock, and to this fact we owe the varying 
forms of valleys, hills, and cliffs. Erosion 
is carried on by rivers, which cut canons 
and gorges; the rain, which washes down 
the fine particles; the sun, which heats the 
rocks, thus loosening and detaching small 
particles; the frost, by the action of which 
water freezes in rock crevices and then ex¬ 
pands and forces the sides apart; the sea, 
the wind, springs, glaciers, etc., and bur¬ 
rowing insects and animals. 

Erysipelas, er'i-sip'e-las, a bacterial 
disease accompanied by an acute inflamma¬ 
tion of the skin, starting usually from a 
single point—often a wound—and spread¬ 
ing gradually. The skin on any portion of 
the body may be affected, but the disease 
more often starts on the face or head. The 
accompanying symptoms are fever, head¬ 
ache and nausea, and sometimes pain in 
parts affected. 

Erysipelas is contagious and infectious. 
It used to be of common occurrence in 
military hospitals, terminating fatally in 
many instances. The disease is under bet¬ 
ter control than formerly, but is always 


serious, demanding the attention of a phy¬ 
sician. 

Escalator, a device for carrying people 
from one level to another. As a substitute 
for the ordinary elevator or “lift”, as they 
say in England, it has been . found very 
satisfactory, for it can accommodate many 
more persons and is much safer. In ap¬ 
pearance an escalator is quite like an ordi¬ 
nary stairway and may be used as such, but 
it really consists of an endless series of steps 
in constant motion, with a hand-rail mov¬ 
ing at the same speed. Escalators have 
been installed in some of the great depart¬ 
ment stores, in a number of the large rail¬ 
way stations, and are used in going to and 
from the London underground railroad. 

Eschscholtz, esh'sholts, Johann 
(1793-1834), a German naturalist. He 
was born at Dorpat, and, though he trav¬ 
eled widely, he died there. He was pro¬ 
fessor of anatomy in the university of his 
native town. As a physician and natural¬ 
ist Eschscholtz accompanied the Russian 
navigator, Kotzebue, in exploring expe¬ 
ditions in the Pacific, 1815-18 and 1823- 
26. Eschscholtz Bay on the coast of 
Alaska was named for him. The Cali¬ 
fornia state flower, the delicate, yellow- 
flowered Eschscholtzia, bears his name. 
Eschscholtz published several volumes, in¬ 
cluding a Zoological Atlas and a System 
of Acalephae , the latter being a work on 
jelly fishes and allied forms. 

Escorial, or, less properly, Escurial, a 
royal summer residence of Spain. It is 
situated about twenty-five miles northwest 
of Madrid. It was built by Philip II 
during the sixteenth century. It is one 
of the largest groups of buildings in the 
world. It is in the form of a huge rect¬ 
angle, 744 feet from north to south, and 
580 feet in width. The interior is cut 
into rectangular courts by intersecting 
walls. At each corner of the outer wall 
rises a tower. The plan of the whole 
building is intended to represent the grid¬ 
iron of martyrdom lying upside down, that 
is to say, with its four legs upward. The 
‘outer wall is of gray granite. It is pierced 
by innumerable windows, said to be 11,000 
in number, giving the peculiar aspect of 
a large mill or military barrack. There 


ESKIMO 


are also 14,000 doors, affording communi¬ 
cation from one part of the edifice to 
another. When completed it was called 
proudly the eighth wonder of the world. 
Tramping steadily upstairs and down it 
would not be possible to traverse all the 
passages, stairways, and rooms in a single 
day. The principal apartments of this pe¬ 
culiar edifice are the royal palace; a splen¬ 
did chapel, 320 feet in length; a royal 
mausoleum; and a monastery. The mau¬ 
soleum is a magnificently decorated octa¬ 
gon chamber, in which kings only and the 
mothers of kings are buried. Various 
apartments contain masterpieces of the 
great artists, including Raphael, Titian, 
and Rubens. A library of 20,000 volumes 
contains many priceless manuscripts—rel¬ 
ics of Arabic learning. Although the 
Spanish people take great pride in the Es- 
corial, other demands upon the public 
purse have prevented its being kept in 
good repair. It was struck by lightning 
in 1872 and injured seriously by fire. A 
school is maintained in the old monastery. 

Eskimo, es'ki-mo, a North American 
people. They range for 5,000 miles from 
Alaska, around the Arctic shores, to Green¬ 
land and Labrador. To this territory must 
be added 500 miles of coast in eastern 
Siberia. The Eskimos in some respects 
resemble the Mongolians of Siberia, but 
they are now classed as a division of the 
great American or Red Race. Although 
scattered in small parties throughout this 
immense territory, they are thought to 
number not over 40,000 in all. In their 
own language they call themselves Innuit, 
or the people, signifying that all others 
are to be regarded as outsiders or foreign¬ 
ers. The Eskimo is a sturdy, hardy fel¬ 
low, with a long body and short legs, giv¬ 
ing him a squatty appearance. His hands 
and feet are small. His skull is high. He 
has coarse, straight, black hair, black eyes, 
high cheek bones, and a broad nose. His 
complexion, once the smoke and grime are 
removed, is rather lighter than that of 
other Indians. 

In dress, the men and women are much 
alike. Both sexes wear fur trousers and 
coats. The skins of the seal, the fox, or 
any hairy animal are used for clothing. 


The collar of the coat is prolonged into 
a sort of hood, to be drawn over the head 
in winter. This hood, which hangs down 
the back, is used by the Eskimo woman 
as a convenient place in which to carry a 
young child. In their houses both sexes 
remove the fur coat, and go about clad 
in trousers only. Tattooing is a common 
practice. The men have a curious habit 
of wearing a pair of large bone buttons 
or studs, the shanks of which are inserted 
through slits made in the lower lip. 

Although waterfowl, fish, and various 
land and sea animals furnish a part of his 
support, the Eskimo is dependent chiefly 
on two animals,—the dog and the seal. 
In winter, though all other food fails, the 
seal is obliged to ' come up through holes 
in the ice to breathe, and is taken by the 
Eskimo, who lies in wait with his harpoon. 
This animal furnishes skins for tents and 
clothing. Its blubber furnishes oil and 
fuel and light. Blubber and flesh form the 
chief article of winter food. If a polar 
bear can be taken, so much the better; but 
the seal is the Eskimo’s chief dependence. 
The Eskimo dog is a vicious, wolf-like ani¬ 
mal of great endurance. It has been 
trained to draw sledges. With his dogs, 
the Eskimo hunter is able to make long 
trips, otherwise impossible, in search of 
seals. He carries with him a large fur 
sleeping bag in which he is able to sleep 
whenever fatigue overtakes him. We can¬ 
not say when night overtakes him, because 
in the Arctic region, the winter night is 
several months in length. The Eskimo is 
also an expert boatman. His kayak or 
canoe is made of skins stretched over a 
light frame constructed of bones or pieces 
of wood. A sort of skin deck is drawn 
up around the boatman’s waist in such a 
way as to keep out water completely. He 
uses a paddle with great dexterity. With 
its help he is able to right himself without 
inconvenience, in case his boat should be 
overturned. With his kayak the hunter 
plunges through the surf fearlessly in pur¬ 
suit of game. 

The Eskimos live in small villages of a 
few families. In the summer time the 
families wander, seldom, however, going 
far inland; in winter they return, usually 


ESPARTO—ESPERANTO 


to the same locality, always on the sea¬ 
shore. They have great skill in construct¬ 
ing temporary houses of blocks of snow; 
but their permanent homes are made usu¬ 
ally of stones, chinked with sods and cov¬ 
ered with earth. The entrance is a low, 
half underground passage. An Eskimo 
home is far from attractive. The house 
has a fishy, oily smell, and is surrounded 
usually by offal. As a people they show 
an inclination to keep away from the 
whites and to preserve their own language 
and primitive methods of worship. Some 
progress has been made by the Moravian 
Brethren in Greenland, however, where 
most of the villages have embraced a form 
of Christianity. 

See Reindeer; Peary; Greenland; 
Alaska. 

Esparto, or Spanish Grass, a tall 

grass native to the Mediterranean coun¬ 
tries. It flourishes especially in the sandy, 
semi-arid sea slopes of Spain and Algeria, 
where it forms plots from ten to thirty 
feet in diameter. It is a leafy, hairy plant, 
from three to five feet high, closely re¬ 
lated to the American feather grass, black 
oats, and porcupine grass. The fiber, in 
the leaves in particular, is exceedingly 
tough. Cables of the Spanish navy are 
made of this material. They are light and 
float on the water. Large quantities of 
esparto are collected in Spain and Algeria 
for cordage and paper material. It forms 
one of the principal exports of Algeria. 
The supply of the material is limited. It 
is seldom seen in the United States. Es¬ 
parto grows wild in the district inland 
from Tripoli. It is brought to the coast 
on camels. “During one day in April, 
1909,” says Consul William Coffin, “1,800 
camels loaded with esparto came into mar¬ 
ket at Tripoli.” The grass is sold to 
exporters, who clean it and pack it in bales 
of about 600 pounds each. Tunis and 
Algiers are also shipping points for espar¬ 
to.° The best article is obtained from 
Spain. The process of making esparto pulp 
does not differ greatly from that employed 
in making paper pulps. The grass is 
boiled in caustic soda, washed, and 
bleached with chlorine solution. A bale 
yields about fifty-six per cent of its weight 


in fiber. England is a heavy buyer of es¬ 
parto. About 460,000,000 pounds were 
imported in 1908. It is one of the prin¬ 
cipal materials employed in making Eng¬ 
lish writing and printing paper. It is 
worth from eight to thirteen dollars a ton 
on board ship in the Mediterranean. See 
Sisal; Manila; Hemp. 

Esperan'to, an artificial language pro¬ 
posed for international use by Dr. Ludwig 
Lazare Zamenhof, an oculist of Warsaw, 
Russian Poland. Dr. Zamenhof published 
his first pamphlet over the pseudonym “Es¬ 
peranto,” a word which, in the new lan¬ 
guage, means “the hoper.” 

Esperanto is much easier to learn than 
Volapiik. In fact one who knows some¬ 
thing of Latin, and is familiar with two or 
three modern languages can read Esperan¬ 
to at sight with but little difficulty. Dr. 
Zamenhof based his language on some six 
or eight of the more important European 
tongues. .The vocabulary, which is far 
smaller than that of Volapiik, is made up 
as far as possible of Latin roots, and words 
common to several languages. Sounds, as 
the English th or the German ii , peculiar 
to any one language are omitted. A uni¬ 
form pronunciation of all vowels and con¬ 
sonants, phonetic spelling, and a grammar 
so simple and so regular that it may be 
mastered, it is said, in an hour, combine to 
form a language that, although it has been 
followed by many others, seems to have 
met with general favor. European news¬ 
papers publish articles in Esperanto, and 
several periodicals are issued entirely in 
this language. The Esperanto club of 
Paris has a membership running into the 
thousands, and clubs and societies exist in 
many large cities of Europe and America. 
An Esperanto typewriting machine is man¬ 
ufactured and commercial schools and col¬ 
leges are beginning to offer courses for the 
study of the language for shorthand pur¬ 
poses. 

In August, 1910, the sixth International 
Esperanto Congress, the first in America, 
was held at Washington, D. C. Thirteen 
nations sent delegates, about one-half of 
whom addressed the congress in Esperanto. 
All expressed unqualified approval of the. 
language as a means of international com- 


ESSAY—ESTHETICS 


munication, and those not prepared to 
speak it at that time, promised to do so in 
the future. A still more significant fact 
than that these delegates spoke Esperanto 
is that their hearers understood the Esper¬ 
anto they spoke, the various foreign accents 
proving no hindrance. It was stated at 
that time that at twenty-one international 
congresses relating to other subjects 
Esperanto had been used. 

Many interesting occurrences of the con¬ 
gress might be related. There were excur¬ 
sions, lectures, concerts, and entertainments 
in which persons who knew no word of 
each other’s native tongue enjoyed each 
other’s society by means of Esperanto. The 
“Hickman Players” presented As You Like 
It in Esperanto, of which language they 
knew nothing three weeks before. The 
rules of our national game were printed in 
Esperanto and presented to foreign dele¬ 
gates, that they might enjoy the base-ball 
game between Washington and Cleveland. 
At the Sunday service of St. Paul’s Episco¬ 
pal Church Esperanto was the only 
language spoken. Even a few of the 
Washington police force learned Esperanto 
that they might be able to direct foreigners 
attending the congress. 

It would be as impossible to stop the Esper¬ 
anto movement now as it would be to stop the 
propagation of the Christian religion.—W. J. 
Spillman. 

Ten thousand clear-voiced chimes could not 
accomplish what the possession of a common 
tongue and a common aim did to make of the 
most widely-separated nationalities friends and 
brothers.—Henry James Forman. 

Essay, in literature, a prose composi¬ 
tion in which an author presents not so 
much his knowledge of a subject as his 
thought upon it, giving us a little of his 
own mental or spiritual life as it has de¬ 
veloped with and about the subject of 
which he writes. The word essay, or as¬ 
say, an old form whose modern usage in 
the testing of metals may help to make 
clear the meaning, is from a Latin word 
and signifies a testing or trying out. So 
a literary essay is a testing of human 
thought. J. Rose Colby in a little book on 
Literature and Life in School, tells us that 
the essay is used by an author “for the 
direct confession of his beliefs, doubts, 


loves, hates, prejudices, whims, supersti¬ 
tions, vanities, for his questionings of the 
meanings of things, his answers to his own 
questions, his ignorance, his vision of 
truth.” The essay helps us, therefore, to 
know an author as we know our friends 
and is thus one of the most fascinating of 
literary forms. 

As far as subject-matter goes, an essay 
is comparatively brief; it is not a fin¬ 
ished production. Literary finish, however, 
grace, ease, and beauty of style are to be 
expected. The history of the essay as a 
distinct literary form begins near the end 
of the sixteenth century with Montaigne 
who wrote in a chatty, somewhat humorous 
vein on the social life of his times. Bacon, 
the first of English essayists,wrote on more 
serious topics and was followed by a long 
list of authors whose essays cover a great 
variety of subjects. Macaulay, Carlyle, and 
Matthew Arnold are writers of critical es¬ 
says; Froude, of historical; Huxley, of 
scientific. Addison’s essays are unequaled 
in graceful humor and good-natured satire. 
Lamb’s Essays of Elia are delightfully en¬ 
tertaining and if a boy or girl would read 
essays there is nothing better to begin with. 
Other noted names are De Quincey, Swift, 
Milton, Johnson and Ruskin. Social, polit¬ 
ical, literary, and ethical subjects are treat¬ 
ed in various ways according to the taste, 
talent, humor, and convictions of the au¬ 
thor. In America Washington Irving was 
the first essayist in point of time, while 
Emerson has attained the highest rank. 

Esthetics, or Aesthetics, the science 
which aims to deduce from nature and taste 
the rules that govern art. It is also defined 
as that branch of philosophy which deals 
with the principles of the beautiful. It is 
an elusive study, and one which requires a 
broad knowledge of the fine arts before it 
can be pursued to advantage, but it has en¬ 
gaged the attention of thinkers for ages 
past. Plato, over 2,200 years ago, formu¬ 
lated a theory of art in its relation to life 
which is, briefly, that only such art as di¬ 
rectly helps fit one for a life of courage 
and temperance should be tolerated. His 
theory is based upon the teachings of his 
master, Socrates. Aristotle later argues 
that the only aim of art, particularly 




ETCHING—ETHER 


poetry, should be to please. Many other 
writers have held to one opinion or the 
other, but with additions or changes of 
their own. The profoundest works upon 
the subject are those of the great German 
philosophers, such as Leibnitz, Wolff, 
Baumgarten, and Kant. 

Etching, a method of picture making; 
also a picture produced by this method. 
Strictly speaking, a plate of metal is etched 
and the picture is printed from the etched 
plate. Etching differs from engraving. In 
the latter the lines are formed by a steel 
tool held in the hand of the engraver. In 
etching, the lines are etched or bitten out 
by the action of an acid. The etcher uses 
a thin plate of metal. It must have a high¬ 
ly polished surface. For a picture requir¬ 
ing broad, black lines, zinc is preferred; 
for fine, delicate lines copper is superior. 
Both copper and zinc are readily eaten or 
bitten by an acid. The artist first prepares 
his plate by warming the surface and rub¬ 
bing it with a silk bag containing a deli¬ 
cate sort of asphalt. In this way he coats 
the entire plate with a varnish that nitric 
acid cannot attack. As this varnish is 
transparent, it is smoked to turn it brown, 
a color that shows lines well. 

The artist then draws the desired pic¬ 
ture on the varnished surface with a fine 
steel tool called a needle. The point of 
the needle removes the varnish wherever 
it passes. Care is taken not to scratch 
the metal. As the point of the needle 
plays easily on the waxed surface, the 
artist is as free as though using a pencil 
or pen on a sheet of paper. When his 
drawing is complete the etcher puts' on a 
pair of rubber gloves and immerses his 
plate in a shallow basin of weak nitric acid. 
The acid bites or etches lines in the metal 
where the needle of the artist has removed 
the protecting varnish or wax.. As soon 
as the etcher thinks the most delicate lines, 
as, for instance, sky' lines, are bitten deep 
enough, he removes the plate from the 
bath and protects such portions by a coat¬ 
ing of varnish—stopping out, this is called 
—and returns the plate to the acid. By 
the use of stopping-out varnish, as many 
degrees of delicacy and emphasis as may 
be desirable may be had. The advantage 


of both heavy and light lines is secured 
in this way. 

When the etching is completed, the 
varnish is removed by washing in turpen¬ 
tine. The plate is then fastened on a 
wooden block or back. The printer planes 
off a shaving or pastes on paper as may 
be needed to give the exact thickness re¬ 
quired for printing. Not infrequently the 
lines do not print well, and it is necessary 
to return the plate with a proof to the 
etcher for correction. 

In printing, the etched lines are filled 
with ink and the rest of the surface is 
wiped off. By leaving slight traces of 
ink on the surface, fine, soft tints are ob¬ 
tained, giving the etching a rich, mellow 
effect. The furrows of an etched plate 
are hollowed out usually by the burrow¬ 
ing of the acid under the edges of the 
lines, giving a greater capacity for hold¬ 
ing ink than if they were made by a tool. 
One who is skilled can tell an etching 
by passing his finger tip over the paper. 
The lines form little ridges of ink quite 
perceptible to the touch, and quite dif¬ 
ferent from the lines of a woodcut or 
ordinary letters which create depressions. 

Skillful etching requires not only a 
creative and artistic mind, but a skillful 
eye and hand. Of noted etchers, the artist 
Rembrandt is yet considered unsurpassed. 

See Engraving. 

Eternal City, The. See Rome ; 

Caine, Hall. 

Ether, in the ordinary use of the word, 
a light, colorless liquid having a refresh¬ 
ing odor and a sweetish, burning taste. It 
evaporates rapidly. It is so inflammable 
that it is classed as an explosive. It is a 
union of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. 
It is prepared by distilling a mixture of 
five parts of alcohol with nine parts of 
sulphuric acid. When a little of it is 
poured out in the palm of the hand it 
evaporates quickly, leaving a cold sensa¬ 
tion. During evaporation it absorbs heat 
so rapidly that a fine spray of ether may 
be used to freeze, that is to say, harden, 
the tissues for the dissector’s knife. The 
fumes of ether are used by surgeons to 
produce unconsciousness. See Chloro¬ 
form ; Surgery. 



ETHER—ETON 


Ether, in physics and astronomy, the 
name given to the substance which it is 
assumed fills all space beyond our atmos¬ 
phere. It is thought that light is a vibra¬ 
tion of ether. It is thought also that heat, 
gravity, and electricity are dependent upon 
ether for their existence as forces of na¬ 
ture. No one knows exactly the nature of 
this stellar or cosmic ether, and some sci¬ 
entists reject the idea of its existence. Its 
acceptance has been brought about because 
it offers a satisfactory explanation of the 
phenomena of radiation, refraction, dif¬ 
fraction, and polarization of light. 

Ethics, the science of right conduct or 
character, or the doctrine of man’s duty in 
respect to himself and the rights of others. 
As of esthetics, it has been argued that 
ethics is a branch of philosophy, or specu¬ 
lation as to the causes governing the uni¬ 
verse, rather than of science which deals 
with a classified body of knowledge gained 
by methods of experiment. The question 
is too abstruse to be discussed here at 
length. Ethics as a college subject is of¬ 
fered usually in the department of phi¬ 
losophy and forms a most interesting study. 
Questions such as the following might be 
discussed in a class in ethics: 

Is it right to secure an education which 
means a sacrifice on some one else’s part 
in order to make the most of your powers 
for the common good? Is a lie ever jus¬ 
tifiable? Has one any real right to own 
property? Is self-destruction under any 
circumstances excusable ? 

Ethiopia, e-thi-6'pi-a, among the an¬ 
cients, a term applied to the southern part 
of the world inhabited by people of dark 
complexion. The word is Greek, meaning 
literally a burnt countenance. In its wid¬ 
est application the name covered those 
parts of Asia inhabited by the dark-skinned 
Hindus as well as the Africans. In its 
modern use the term is applied to that 
part of Africa which is inhabited by the 
negro race. In a more limited sense the 
term is applied to the present region of 
Nubia and Abyssinia, and, in its lowest 
limits, Ethiopia was the land of Kush, 
belonging to Egypt, a country noted for 
ivory and aromatic spices. 

Ethnology. See Races of Man. 


Etna, or Aetna, Mount, a volcano situ¬ 
ated on the shore of the island of Sicily. 

It is the largest active volcano in Europe. 

It is a huge mountain mass rising directly 
from the coast to a height of 10,835 feet, 
—a half higher than Mt. Washington. A 
large number of auxiliary craters are situ¬ 
ated like bubbles around the upper part of 
the cone. The base of the mountain is 
about thirty miles in diameter. Like other 
volcanic soils, the slopes are fertile, and 
are occupied by villages whose inhabitants 
are engaged in the cultivation of figs, dates, 
oranges, and olives. A higher belt pro¬ 
duces the chestnut, birch, beech, and pine. 
Not less than 400 eruptions have been re¬ 
corded, several of them destructive to hu¬ 
man life. In 1169, 15,000 persons are said 
to have been buried beneath the streams 
of lava. In 1669, 10,000; in 1693, 60,- 
000 lives were lost. In 1 755, the year of 
the Lisbon earthquake, another destructive 
eruption took place. The years 1852, 1865, 
1874, 1879, 1886, and 1892 were marked 
by eruptions. Among the theories by which 
the ancients strove to account for the activ¬ 
ity of Etna was the legend of Enceladus. 
According to this legend he was one of 
the hundred-handed Titans who made war 
against the gods. Jupiter slew him with 
a thunderbolt and buried him deep beneath 
the mountain. According to some legends, . 
Vulcan, the Roman god of fire and the 
patron of blacksmithing, had a forge in 
Mt. Etna, where he employed the Cyclops 
in fashioning thunderbolts for Jove. Tour¬ 
ists are enabled to ascend the mountain 
by a railway which encircles it like a spiral. 
The railroad is seventy miles in length. 

Eton, an English village on the east 
bank of the Thames, opposite Windsor Cas¬ 
tle. It follows the* windings of a single 
street, and contains about 3,500 people. 
Its celebrity is due to Eton College, a 
school for boys, established by Henry VI 
in 1440 under the name of the “College 
of the Blessed Virgin Mary Beside Wind¬ 
sor.” The course is chiefly classical. 
About 1,000 boys are in attendance. The 
school was established for poor boys; but 
it is now the most/ aristocratic school in 
England,—a condition fostered, no doubt, 
by the royal residence at Windsor. 


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